Is "assist in" the same as "assist with"? Can I always substitute the one where the other is used, or is there a difference in meaning?
In general, they're pretty similar and frequently interchangeable -- at least one-way. (You can say "assist with" for "assist in," but you should be careful swapping "assist in" for "assist with," since there are some nuances.
If you "assist in," it may indicate a longer-term and/or more in-depth assistance -- the senior academic meeting with the junior one daily over a course of months, for instance.
If you "assist with" something, it can indicate a much shorter-term, or "shallower" form of assistance -- you aren't going around asking questions to help the police, but are instead answering the questions the police gave. (If you said "I am assisting in the police inquiries," you would be presumed to be doing a share of the work.)
So you can assist your co-worker with a project, or you can assist your co-worker in his work, and it means pretty much the same thing. (Though even there, notice the nuance: a project is a thing with an end, while "his work" is more open-ended!) But you want to be careful saying you're assisting the police in their investigations unless you mean that you're doing more than just answering a few questions.
However, even if you use the "wrong" in/with, a sentence in context will usually be interpreted the correct way.
It does depend on the context, but let's imagine that a group of people are discussing a collision on the roads.
"I believe it could have been prevented."
To me, and I'm not sure if the implications vary between individuals, but the speaker is saying that something could have been done a while before the situation occurred. For example, it may have been avoided by:
- Safer road laws
- A lower speed limit
- Better brakes on cars
On the other hand, "avoided" implies that the actions taken to circumnavigate the incident would have been last minute, or unplanned.
- Braking
- Veering out of the way
- Honking the drivers' horns
Google defines the terms as:
Avoid: keep away from or stop oneself from doing (something).
Prevent: keep (something) from happening.
They could be used as synonyms, and are fairly interchangeable (although one usually
feels more natural to speak.)
Best Answer
In the past when there were no computers, in office or in any secured place, people sign in by signing their signature and time in while entering into the place. When they leave, they sign out by putting the time out and sign. Website followed these words (sign-in and sign-out) in the similar way when computers came.
The notebook that people sign in and sign out basically contains logs, so it's called logbook. So it's also valid to use "login and logout" instead of "sign in and sign out". But in those days, "login" and "logout" was not used much mainly because of the fact that you are signing; signing is the most important event there.
When computers came in 1980s, the security is the most important thing, so most of the operation that user do are logged in the system. There are error logs, security logs, transaction logs and many more.
So when a user is allowed into a secured website by taking the username and password, this event is also logged in the system for security reasons. So technically speaking, it's meaningful, valid and better to call this events as "login and logout" instead of "signin and out" because you don't actually sign. But many still use "sign in and sign out" as well just following the old days. But you can see here, the use of "login" peaked after 1990. Logoff is just a synonym of logout.