# Grammar question for grammar police. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 11, 2018, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376 "2018-03-11T05:48:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![PineappleShots63](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/dc4da7/32.png) [@PineappleShots63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PineappleShots63)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/1 "2018-03-11T05:48:49Z")
This is my first post. I have been wondering. If a bird is flying and for some reason all of a sudden falls, would he (or she) be falling “out of midair” or “from midair” and why? This question has been bothering me for ever now. I’d love to hear any good answers please. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/2 "2018-03-11T06:52:08Z")
Are you sure this belongs in the “About This Message Board” forum? Anyway, to answer your question, a crude corpus search indicates that neither is used for what you are saying. Usually people say, _ **fall from the sky** _. _ **Out of midair** _ and _ **from midair** _ tend to be used from the perspective of someone on the ground, for example, in phrases like, _ **pluck something out of midair** _, or _ **snatch something from midair** _. See these corpus results: [out of midair](https://s17.postimg.org/iwhja0ofz/out_of_midair.png) [from midair](https://s17.postimg.org/ealf1oicf/from_midair.png) [from the sky](https://s17.postimg.org/ijq53vggv/from_the_sky.png) ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/3 "2018-03-11T06:53:57Z")
Either would be acceptable to this Grammar Nazi. Welcome to the boards, hope you find your niche here! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/4 "2018-03-11T07:07:40Z")
This is an interesting question. My gut feeling was that I don’t think I would use either construction, but I wasn’t immediately sure why. Here’s where I come out, I think: “In midair” is the most common expression, used to emphasize that when something happens, the ground is a long way below. So it’s not just a neutral location like “on the beach”. It’s emphasizing the _drama_ of the location where something happens. So there’s nothing grammatically wrong with either “from midair” or “out of midair”, but I think there’s a semantic issue. I don’t usually think of “midair” as a way to describe a place _from_ which events begin to unfold, more a descriptor of a dramatic place _where_ events unfold. In the Google ngram data, “from midair” and “out of midair” are both very rare compared to “in midair”. > **[Google Books Ngram Viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=in%2Bmidair%2C%2Bfrom%2Bmidair%2C%2Bout%2Bof%2Bmidair&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cin%20midair%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cfrom%20midair%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cout%20of%20midair%3B%2Cc0)** > > Google Books Ngram Viewer ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/5 "2018-03-11T07:25:15Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > “In midair” is the most common expression, used to emphasize that when something happens, the ground is a long way below. Yes, except that _ **fall** _ isn’t even in the top 35 verbal collocates, and the OP is specifically asking about _ **fall** _. See [this list of verbal collocates for _ **in midair** _](https://s17.postimg.org/b7koxzipr/in_midair.png). ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/6 "2018-03-11T07:31:27Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > This is an interesting question. My gut feeling was that I don’t think I would use either construction, but I wasn’t immediately sure why. Here’s where I come out, I think: > > “In midair” is the most common expression, used to emphasize that when something happens, the ground is a long way below. So it’s not just a neutral location like “on the beach”. It’s emphasizing the _drama_ of the location where something happens. > > So there’s nothing grammatically wrong with either “from midair” or “out of midair”, but I think there’s a semantic issue. I don’t usually think of “midair” as a way to describe a place _from_ which events begin to unfold, more a descriptor of a dramatic place _where_ events unfold. > > In the Google ngram data, “from midair” and “out of midair” are both very rare compared to “in midair”. > [Google Ngram Viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=in+midair%2C+from+midair%2C+out+of+midair&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cin%20midair%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cfrom%20midair%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cout%20of%20midair%3B%2Cc0) In my opinion, _falling from midair_ and _falling in midair_ have two different connotations. _Falling in midair_ implies, to me, that the falling object might recover and resume normal flight. _Falling from midair_ implies the fall will continue until the falling object strikes the ground. As you can see, I feel _falling from midair_ is preferable to _falling out of midair_. But I can’t point to any grammatical reason for this so it’s probably just a personal preference. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/7 "2018-03-11T07:38:44Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > As you can see, I feel _falling from midair_ is preferable to _falling out of midair_. But I can’t point to any grammatical reason for this so it’s probably just a personal preference. You don’t need personal preference: _ **look at the data** _ in a corpus, like COCA, and you see that neither is found collocating with _ **fall** _. As I said above, _ **from midair** _ and _ **out of midair** _ tend to collocate with verbs like _ **snatch** _, etc. ETA: This isn’t a question of grammar, either, but usage. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/8 "2018-03-11T10:13:46Z")
**Moderator Action** Welcome to the SDMB, **PineappleShots63**. Since this is not a question about the message board itself, let’s move this to a more appropriate forum. Moving thread from ATMB to GQ. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/9 "2018-03-11T10:35:38Z")
> [@PineappleShots63](#): > > I have been wondering. If a bird is flying and for some reason all of a sudden falls, would he (or she) be falling “out of midair” or “from midair” and why? I don’t see much difference, and this isn’t a grammar question, but a personal choice of wording question. Use the one you like most. ---
**Author:** ![MikeF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MikeF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeF)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/10 "2018-03-11T13:01:55Z")
Out of is usually associated with “thin air”. I’m no grammar Nazi. They wouldn’t have me as I didn’t know who to send the application to. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/11 "2018-03-11T13:14:15Z")
To me, “out of mid air” denotes something appearing suddenly. E.g., like a magician making a dove appear out of mid air. It can also denote a metaphorical event. E.g., “I got dumped out of mid air.” Yes, “thin air” might be a better fit, but “mid air” is a perfectly cromulent variation. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/12 "2018-03-11T13:51:00Z")
Again, I’ll just repeat that the OP is asking specifically about the adverbial phrase which collocates with “fall,” so speculations comparing the isolated phrases, or about other verbs, is not really addressing the issue. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/13 "2018-03-11T14:29:34Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > You don’t need personal preference: _ **look at the data** _ in a corpus, like COCA, and you see that neither is found collocating with _ **fall** _. As I said above, _ **from midair** _ and _ **out of midair** _ tend to collocate with verbs like _ **snatch** _, etc. > > ETA: This isn’t a question of grammar, either, but usage. While that’s true, as a native English speaker, both forms sounds just fine and unobjectionable to me. That said, yes, “fell from the sky” and “fell out of the sky” is a far, far, far more common way of expressing this. Looking through Google Books, I do see the form “fell from midair” returns 60 hits and “fall from midair” returns 42. “Fell out of midair” returns 8 and “fall out of midair” returns 9. So, not unheard of, but certainly on the rare side. ETA: Plus looks like also another 109 for “fell from mid-air” and 46 for “fall from mid-air” as well as another 5 and 10 respectively for “fall out of midair” and “fell out of midair.” (Looking through the examples, I see one where I would definitely not use “fell from the sky” and prefer “fell from mid-air” which concerns a spider falling from midair.) ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/14 "2018-03-11T14:42:52Z")
> [@PineappleShots63](#): > > This is my first post. > > I have been wondering. If a bird is flying and for some reason all of a sudden falls, would he (or she) be falling “out of midair” or “from midair” and why? This question has been bothering me for ever now. I’d love to hear any good answers please. 🙂 Both are wrong … they are verbose … attend please: The bird fell. The bird fell out of midair. The bird fell from midair. The first sentence is complete, no need to add all the extra words … from where else would the bird fall? … ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/15 "2018-03-11T15:04:43Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Both are wrong … they are verbose … attend please: > > The bird fell. > The bird fell out of midair. > The bird fell from midair. > > The first sentence is complete, no need to add all the extra words … from where else would the bird fall? … A tree? My hand? Its cage? And there is nothing “wrong” about verbosity. English is not about communicating thoughts in the most efficient manner possible. Sometimes you want the extra words for clarity, rhythm, cadence, rhyme, emphasis, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/16 "2018-03-11T16:35:33Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > You don’t need personal preference: _ **look at the data** _ in a corpus, like COCA, and you see that neither is found collocating with _ **fall** _. As I said above, _ **from midair** _ and _ **out of midair** _ tend to collocate with verbs like _ **snatch** _, etc. > > ETA: This isn’t a question of grammar, either, but usage. And I posted what I use. I don’t need a cite for what I explicitly identified as a personal opinion. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/17 "2018-03-11T16:37:44Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > ETA: Plus looks like also another 109 for “fell from mid-air” and 46 for “fall from mid-air” as well as another 5 and 10 respectively for “fall out of midair” and “fell out of midair.” Sorry. Those last two examples of “midair” should be “mid-air,” of course. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/18 "2018-03-11T16:44:32Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > A tree? My hand? Its cage? > > And there is nothing “wrong” about verbosity. English is not about communicating thoughts in the most efficient manner possible. Sometimes you want the extra words for clarity, rhythm, cadence, rhyme, emphasis, etc. The bird is flying, and then fell … would the bird be flying in your hand or flying in a tree … the context makes it clear the bird is falling out of the sky … “Verbosity typically means the act of adding extra words to your prose that provide no relevant information or are useless to what the meaning of the communication is all about.” “Verbosity means adding useless words.” See the difference … “typically”, “act”, “prose”, “information”, “communication”, “about” _etc etc etc_ are all superfluous to the expression of my thought … they’re just verbal diarrhea … it’s not always wrong, but it certainly can be … The OP didn’t say … so I think the default is Standard Written English … which prohibits verbosity … other forms of English have other rules … conversational English allows “you know” multiple times every sentence … “That there bird done did, like, fall out of midair, you know.” One wouldn’t think twice hearing that sentence … but reading it just grates on the nerves I think … ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/19 "2018-03-11T20:24:16Z")
I agree with those who’ve told you (in different ways) that “mid-air” doesn’t belong in what you’re trying to say. Another way of explaining the same point: it isn’t newsworthy when a flying bird falls from mid-air, because all flying birds that fall do that. It’s a little like saying “This guy drove into the parking lot, stopped, and then guess where he got out of - his car!” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2018, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376/20 "2018-03-11T21:50:05Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And I posted what I use. I don’t need a cite for what I explicitly identified as a personal opinion. You are right, and I didn’t mean to say that one must. It’s interesting that apparently many here will accept the OP’s two options, but they are not used very often. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grammar-question-for-grammar-police/810376.md?page=2)