Not everyone has ill intentions toward you and your family, but if someone is trying to gain access your home, it’s smart to know why. It’s wise to take precautions before opening your door to a stranger. If you hit a door, window, etc., especially several times, to attract someone's attention, you can use the preposition on or at after the verb/noun 'knock'. If a stranger is particularly pushy or says they’re in trouble and in need of help, offer to call the police for them. Someone contemplating a future break in might ask, “What hours do you usually work?” or “When will you be home tomorrow?” Don’t answer personal questions about you or any members of your household. Never reveal anything too personal, and be aware of questions to watch out for. If you don’t know who the person is or they make you uncomfortable, politely ask them to leave. If they say they’re there for maintenance, survey, or sales purposes, ask for a phone number to call to confirm an appointment or their identity, and ask to see identification. Use an intercom or simply talk through the door. Without opening the door, ask for strangers to identify themselves. In fact, the majority of break-ins occur midday. Remember: the time of day doesn’t matter. It’s better to address them or make some noise rather than to remain silent. However, if it’s a potential intruder, they could be knocking to see if it’s a good time to break in-while no one’s home. If you see a stranger at your door, it might be a knee-jerk reaction to pretend you didn’t hear them. Even if you’re home alone, calling out to an “imaginary” friend before responding to the person at the door may make it seem like you’re not alone, which can intimidate potential intruders. It may sound silly, but it’s not a bad idea to call out “I’ll get it!” or “Can someone get the door?” before answering. Train yourself and everyone in your household-including your children-to see who’s at the door before opening it. Whether you have a peephole on your door or you choose to install security cameras, you should have some way to determine who’s at the door without opening it. So what are some measures you can take to stay safe when someone you don’t know comes to your front door? We’ve compiled a few tips on ways to handle the situation:īefore you open the door, always check to see who’s there. Intruders also often pose as salespeople or maintenance professionals in an attempt to gain entry to your home. That feeling isn’t unwarranted, as it’s common for intruders to knock on the front door or ring the doorbell to see if anyone’s home before attempting a break-in. This is, as a lot of linguistic and terminological analysis in language is, boiled down to a little bit of personal and intuitive experience taking the lead, yet a lot of common sense.It can be unsettling when a stranger comes to your front door-especially if you’re home alone. Nevertheless the comical spirit of this use of at in the English language is in fact seriously comical and appreciated in its fullest caricatural presentation of an act when comically serious. The colloquial evidence stands in support of this distinction-he's at it again, a British idiomatic use of at, would well continue this described and eventful appearance of the stranger, although admittedly comically. On the door, formality being that which is carried out and satisfies convention and common etiquette, is the more formal.Īt the door, connoting almost a barrage, an attack in this sense if the specificity of location of the blow/s on the door is taken into account, suggests more than one and more also in sentiment, more than one tap. It would seem at is the version of on which is reflected in the idiomatic "on and on." At suggests a repeated knocking in that it is the less formally appropriate of the choices. We're more concerned about the location where it happened-where the sound of knocking came from. For all intents and purposes, it might have been something else other than the door. In the second sentence, we don't care about the fact that the knock was on the door. He got so scared that he could barely move when he heard a loud knock at the door. He knocked on the door in hopes that someone would open it. That's the place where the act of meeting you will take place. The location is Bob's place (the house or apartment where he lives). This is in principle similar to how we use the preposition at when talking about places as locations. It could have been the door, but it might just as well have been something else that the stranger was knocking on. It happened near the door where the stranger was standing. In the second sentence, at specifically expresses the location where the knocking took place. The stranger was (possibly) knocking on something else while he was standing next to the door. The stranger was knocking on the door itself. They are both correct and basically mean the same thing, but, from a more technical perspective, there is a small, I'd even say tiny, difference between them:
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