Word Choice – “One of Those Nights” vs. “On One of Those Nights”

prepositional-phrasesword-choice

Example sentence:

He crept out of this room when everyone was asleep. (On) one of those
nights, he bumped into his dad.

Is on required? Or maybe the sentence is correct with and without it?

Best Answer

In this example, I'd actually use "One night."

First, there's nothing grammatically wrong with "On one of those nights"; in fact the standard idiomatic usage "One of those nights" does imply the "on." But there are two idiomatic usages to look at:

  • "One night": This is a common way to give an imprecise time. It often provides a setting at the start of a narrative: "One fine day, Peter opened the gate and went out into the meadow." You might even be less specific and say "One time, he bumped into his dad," which is equivalent to "once." The phrase "one night" works together as an adverb.
  • "One of those ___." This is also its own idiom, which can work in several ways:
    • Especially if used with the future tense, it can just mean "at some unspecified time in the future": "One of these days, Alice, I'm gonna send you to the moon!" ("One day" can also be used this way: "I'll be rich one day.") For some reason, there isn't a corresponding use meaning "at some unspecified time in the past." It isn't really idiomatic to say "One of those days, Peter went out into the meadow" (though it would be understood).
    • "X was one of those Ys" can also mean "this X is a typical member of the set Y." "I'm having a rough time. It's been one of those days." (Shorthand for one of those awful, dreadful days, which I don't need to elaborate on because you know what I'm talking about.) Cole Porter contrasts eloquent poetic expression of romantic thrills with the vague, glib dismissal that "It was just one of those things."
  • So, in your example, "On one of those nights" would make perfect sense if it were actually referencing some nights that had been literally mentioned in the previous sentence, like: "He crept out of his room more nights than not, when everyone was asleep. On one of those nights..." But otherwise, "One night" is the best way of setting an unspecified night.
  • By the way, note that if you do use "one of those," then the following word should be plural ("nights").
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