I've heard from somewhere in this website that being can be deleted after almost every preposition… which aroused many questions as to the usage of being for me.
Today, I encountered this sentence:
It was not even close to straight.
What I normally prefer:
It was not even close to being straight.
The original author of the sentence did not include "being" in this sentence, and I wondered if it was fine to do so, as it was just a comment for some silly video (not very credible). This sounded slightly too elided, but not so much that I detected the horrendous ungrammaticality.
So my question is this. Is it grammatical and not informal to delete the being here? And also, is the rumor (at least to me, it is) true that "being" is redundant after the prepositions so is almost always deleted?
Best Answer
"Being" used in this way usually implies behaviour. In your example it sounds like something (i.e. an animate object) was literally out of position or bent, rather than not behaving in a "straight" way.
"Being straight" therefore doesn't make sense here. Especially since it is an expression which has other meanings to do with behaviour, for instance:
See this article for a discussion of be in continuous tense: https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-m_vmwct_3.htm