prepositions - "seminar on" or "seminar in"?


Helping a friend writing a description of the courses taken, we seem to not find information about which is the correct preposition to put with "seminar". After looking through the Internet, in particular, university webpages, I found examples of both, so I cannot arrive to a final answer. I tried to check also some grammar references, but I was unsuccessful.


Which one is correct? "seminar on" or "seminar in"? In particular, is it "seminar on topology" or "seminar in topology"? And more generally, which is the rule to use "in" or "on" related to areas and fields of knowledge?



Answer



‘Seminar on X’ and ‘seminar in X’ are both acceptable; which one will sound more natural depends on what X is. ‘Seminar on X’ can be regarded as a shorter version of ‘seminar on the topic of X’, while ‘seminar in X’ can be regarded as a shorter version of ‘seminar in the discipline of X’. Whether ‘on’ or ‘in’ will be more apt thus depends on whether one would be more inclined to say that X is a topic or that it is an academic discipline.


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