Hi
I am always thankful for your help.
I read this in the textbook and one sentence made me puzzled.
• Recently, I’ve been interviewing at various companies along the fields of IT consulting and actuarial statistics.
It explains that along means “toward”. So I looked up the usage and definition it through Oxford dictionary.
In this sentence, along has the meaning of “from one end to or towards the other end of something”
[Link: along_1 preposition - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com]
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For your reference
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In this context ‘along the fields of’ means ‘various companies from the IT consulting and actuarial sectors’. Please let me know if this makes sense.
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I’d say that in the fields of would be the simplest and most suitable expression. The word along is a misfit here.
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Maybe the author was thinking of the phrase “along these/those lines” when we chose “along” here.
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I agree with Anglophile. In the fields of is the best and most common way of saying it. Along does not work at all.
“It explains that along means “toward””
I don’t like that. When used as a preposition, along would mean something like Walking on the road lengthwise. It may also mean walking next to the road lengthwise, but not on it. You can walk along a river, or along a shoreline, or along a railroad track. In all cases it means lengthwise. Length and long are related words.
While walking along the road, it is true that you are walking toward something, but that’s not what it means. Walking along the road is the act of walking. The fact that you happen to be walking toward something is an unavoidable consequence of any motion.
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Thank you guys.
Until now I haven’t been feeling well. Sorry for my late reply.
Yes, I got the gist of it. As you said, the most proper preposition should be “in”.
However, in a sense like Torsten’s reply, I would like to agree on the author’s thinking of the phrase “along these/those lines”.
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