I need some clarification here about the two sentences below. Please explain which one is correct and why.
A) Thanks for picking my wallet up.
B) Thanks for picking up my wallet.
Answer
The question is essentially asking if picking something up and picking up something are both the same thing, and whether or not both suitable phrasings.
The phrasal verb pick up can mean a few different things:
- To lift something off the ground: I dropped my pen; could you pick it up for me?
- To make something more clean or orderly: Go pick up your room.
- To meet someone at some place to give them a ride: Could you pick me up at the airport?
As for the ordering, in some cases it matters very little:
Go pick your room up.
Go pick up your room.
These both mean the same thing, but the latter sounds better – it doesn’t split the phrasal verb. Although we might say the former in conversation, writers seem to agree with me: when written down, the latter is better.
However, there are other times when it sounds much better to split the two words:
Would you pick me up at the airport?
Would you pick up me at the airport?
For some reason, in this case the former sounds correct, and the latter sounds way off. Again, the Ngram supports that.
To make matters even more confusing, if we change the pronoun to a proper name, it seems like we have more latitude to go either way:
We need to pick up Fido from the kennel before it closes.
We need to pick Fido up from the kennel before it closes.
And again, the Ngram seems to agree.
Getting back to your original pair:
Thanks for picking my wallet up.
Thanks for picking up my wallet.
I think I would write the latter (this Ngram would back me on that), but, if I’m not careful, I might say the former instead. Everyone would still know what I meant, though, even if I used that less-preferred wording.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : yugi , Answer Author : J.R.
