| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints
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| § 7. accompany |
| A traditional rule states that the preposition to use when accompany occurs in passive constructions should be by in the case of persons and with in the case of everything else. Thus you should say The candidate was accompanied by six burly bodyguards, but The salmon was accompanied with a delicious salad. However, by is quite commonly used in sentences of the second type, and the usage is grammatically defensible. The phrase introduced with by normally represents the subject of a related active sentence. You can see this by converting the sentence The salmon was accompanied by a delicious watercress salad to its active counterpart A delicious salad accompanied the salmon. | 1 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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