Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[juliete]

Are the following phrases correct? What do they mean?

P1: the objective in researching the prices of stocks
P2: the objective of researching the prices of stocks
P3: the objective to research the prices of stocks

[Anuradha Chepur]

Usually, it's "objective of...."

[juliete]

Hello Anuradha Chepur

Thanks for your quick reply.

Do you mean P2 is correct?
If you do, what does it mean?

[Anuradha Chepur]

P2 is correct, only thing is it should be prices of shares instead of stocks, I suppose.
It means the intended goal of studying the fluctuating prices of shares, which is most probably to help decide which stocks to invest in.

[juliete]

[Anuradha Chepur]

I would use P2 in this situation, but everyone needn't and P1 is not incorrect.
This is one of those prepositional dilemmas, and
"objective of" seems to be a commoner preference to "objective in";
the former gets 191000000 hits on Google, whereas the latter gets 167000000 hits.

[juliete]

Hello Anuradha Chepur

Thank you very much for your detailed reply.
I understand well.

Thank you.