prepositions - "On website" or "at website"?





This question has been asked at/on SO?



Which sentence is grammatically correct?



  • The papers are freely available at the journal website.

  • The papers are freely available on the journal website.


Using Google's search results:



So, I inferred that both variants are popular. Is this method (comparing the number of results by Googling) sound?



Answer



Speaking as a longtime computer geek, files are said to reside on a hard drive or on a certain machine. Since I know that a website is made of computer files, I think of a website as being on a machine and so any part of the website is also on that machine.


A website's "address" is a "Uniform Resource Locator" or URL. These terms connote the idea of website as "place". In this case the file would be at the website location.


So, if you think of a website as it is actually constructed (files stored on hard drives), you will probably say on.


If you think in the location metaphor, you will probably say at.


Personally I find myself saying "on" to other geeks and falling into "at" when speaking with normal people.


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