Preposition Question

Question

If someone is writing a sentence describing their occupation:

Is it
I am working on an assembly line
or
Working in an assembly line.

I thought it was "in"..because the person doing the assembly work is literally "in" a line...doing their share of the work within the assembly line process.

My brother who actually did work in a factory said he always heard " on the assembly line"

..but I think that is just informal speech in colloquial settings?

What do you think?

First post on these forums, yay

Fivejedjon · Accepted Answer

Welcome to the forum, asolynne.

'On' is far more commonly used, as this https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=work+on+an+assembly+line%2Cwork+in+an+assembly+line&year_start=1920&year_end=2010&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cwork%20on%20an%20assembly%20line%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cwork%20in%20an%20assembly%20line%3B%2Cc0 shows.

Aislynne · Answer

Thanks for the reply.
So would " on the assembly line be the "colloquial phrasing"?
Is "in the assembly line" still grammatically correct or is this a case where colloquial phrasing of a term wins out despite what would be considered the technical proper term?

Fivejedjon · Answer

àaislynneThanks for the reply.So would " on the assembly line be the "colloquial phrasing"?Is "in the assembly line" still grammatically correct or is this a case where colloquial phrasing of a term wins out despite what would be considered he technical proper term?

'On' is the natural, correct preposition.

I, personally, don't think that 'in' sounds natural, but some people apparently do. With prepositions, it's generally usage , not a grammar rule, that decides what is natural. Speakers of English watch things on television, speakers of French watch it à la (at the) television and speakers of German watch it im (in the) television. That's just the way it is

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