Technical Prepositional Phrases in IT Communication
5 exercises — use the correct preposition in fixed IT phrases that appear daily in engineering communication.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
The feature is currently ___ and will not be part of this sprint.
"Out of scope" is the fixed technical phrase meaning a task or feature is not included in the current work unit. "Off scope" is not standard in IT English. "Beyond the scope" is used in formal written English ("beyond the scope of this document") but is not the standard spoken IT idiom. "Out of scale" is not a real IT phrase. Learning fixed prepositional phrases as chunks — rather than constructing them from rules — is the most efficient approach.
2 / 5
We encrypt all data both ___ and ___ transit to comply with GDPR.
The correct fixed phrases are "at rest" (data stored on disk or in databases) and "in transit" (data moving over a network). These are standard security and compliance terms used in encryption documentation, security policies, and compliance frameworks. "In rest" and "on rest" are incorrect. "In transit" (not "during transit" or "on transit") is the standard. These phrases appear verbatim in GDPR compliance documentation, AWS security whitepapers, and ISO 27001 controls.
3 / 5
The legacy authentication service is ___ — please do not make changes to the infrastructure.
"Under maintenance" is the standard phrase for a system in an active maintenance window. The preposition "under" collocates with conditions and states of being managed: "under review," "under construction," "under investigation," "under load." "In maintenance" is sometimes heard informally but "under maintenance" is the established technical standard. "On maintenance" and "at maintenance" are not standard phrases in professional IT English.
4 / 5
This approach works in a single-region deployment but breaks ___ when requests exceed 10,000 per second.
"At scale" means when a system is operating under high volume or large-scale conditions. It is one of the most common phrases in distributed systems discussions: "this works at scale," "fails at scale," "designed to operate at scale." "Under load" is a related phrase (meaning under heavy traffic) but "at scale" is the correct choice here when referring to scale as the operating condition. "In scale" and "on scale" are not standard IT phrases.
5 / 5
The database migration task is ___ the critical path, so any delay will push back the release date.
"On the critical path" is the standard project management phrase meaning a task whose delay directly delays the project deadline. Tasks "on the critical path" have zero float or slack time. "In the critical path" is sometimes heard informally but "on the critical path" is the standard. Similarly: "on the roadmap," "on the backlog," "on call," "on duty." The preposition "on" collocates with planned paths and assigned positions in project management vocabulary.