Experience with or in? Which form is correct?
Experience with or in? Which form is correct? Learning how to use a noun with a preposition is very important in English grammar. There are some rules for this, but much preposition usage is enforced by fixed expressions, which means that you have to memorize the whole phrase. This is also the case with the noun experience. So which preposition is it paired with? This article will answer the question whether it is experience with or in.
First read the following section to make sure you know the definition of the noun experience.
Experience – the meaning
- Experience is the knowledge or skill gained through doing something for a period of time, it also refers to the process of gaining this.
- She has over five years’ experience as a hairdresser.
- Experience is also used to refer to something that happens to you that affects how you feel.
- She had a pretty painful experience at the dentist’s.
- Experience also means the things that have happened to you that make up your life or character.
- Experience has taught me that this strategy does not always work.
Experience with or in? Which one is correct?
So is it experience with or in? It turns out that they are both correct! The noun experience can go with both with and in, however, it depends on the context which preposition should be used. Read the following section to get familiar with the difference.
Experience with or in? What is the difference?
Experience with refers to a situation when you have used something, in other words, it describes the tools you use. Compare the examples below:
- This course provides hands-on experience with JavaScript.
You could also say
- She has no experience with children.
Experience in is more common to use for the context of a particular subject or field of work, as in
- He gained extensive experience in sales while working on the project.
- Our doctor has experience in dealing with patients suffering from stress.
Below you can find some more examples that will help you memorize the difference between experience with and experience in.
Experience with or in? More examples from the literature and press
The clothes were a bit sniffy, but then, from my meager experience with Chase, it seemed that eight-year-old boys could be a bit sniffy themselves.
Kirby Larson, Hattie Big Sky
Tally didn’t have much experience in judging an ugly’s age, but she turned out to be more or less right.
Scott Westerfeld, Uglies
Garfield pledged to use his congressional experience with the country’s finances to keep the economy strong and to prevent wasteful government spending.
Gail Jarrow, Ambushed!
Impressed by her intelligence, he offered her a research analyst job despite her lack of experience in the field.
“New York Times”, Oct 5, 2022
I, however, did use my real name and told people that I was a New York Times reporter who was recording my experience with a tool built into my headset.
“New York Times”, Oct 7, 2022