Toru Higaki
I am busy in, about, with or doing something?? I will be on a business trip tomorrow to Hokkaido, the northern part of Japan. So I have to pack my luggage tonight. And in this case, which expression is better to describe my situation? 1) I am busy in packing my luggage. 2) I am busy with packing my luggage. 3) I am busy about packing my luggage. 4) I am busy packing my luggage. I am not sure whether any apparent difference among those four expressions. Thank you for reading my question.
Aug 27, 2016 10:07 PM
Answers · 6
4
1, 2 and 3 are wrong. 4 is the only one that is correct.
August 27, 2016
2
Options 2 and 4 seem the most natural to this native English speaker from this particular area of the USA. Prepositions are so tricky. Your intention would be clear with any of those options. Have a good trip!
August 27, 2016
1
As a test, I searched for "busy ... packing my luggage", in quotation marks. I changed around in, about and with, and checked the number of results. If you do this as well, you'll see that Paul's answer is perfectly correct: no preposition. The results that used "in" and "about" are written by non-native speakers. "Busy with" is extremely uncommon.
August 28, 2016
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