Separable and Inseparable Phrasal Verbs

English gives you two possible word orders with some phrasal verbs and only one with others. Turn off the lights and turn the lights off are both fine. Look after the baby is fine, and look the baby after is not English at all. Nothing in the spelling tells you which group a verb belongs to, which is why this catches out learners whose grammar is otherwise solid.

A phrasal verb is separable when the object can sit between the verb and the particle. It is inseparable when the object has to follow the particle. That is the entire distinction, and if the choice were always free it would not be worth a page. It stops being free the moment a pronoun is involved.

The pronoun rule

This is the most useful thing on the page, because it turns a vague feeling into a test you can run in your head. Take the verb, attach a pronoun, and listen. If turn it off sounds right, the verb is separable. If look it after sounds wrong while look after it sounds right, the verb is inseparable.

Speakers apply this without thinking about it, and it is one of the few places where a learner mistake sounds immediately foreign rather than just slightly unusual. Getting it right buys you a lot.

Inseparable verbs keep the object after the particle

Run the pronoun test on these and you get the opposite answer. Look after it is natural, look it after is not, so look after is inseparable. The test works in both directions, which is what makes it worth learning.

Most inseparable phrasal verbs are the ones where the particle is really a preposition doing its ordinary job. You look after someone in roughly the way you look at someone, and neither one lets you break the pair apart.

Three-word verbs are always inseparable

This is the one corner of the system with no exceptions you need to worry about. Put up with, look forward to, get on with, come up with, run out of, come down with, look up to: verb, both particles, then the object, every time.

It also means three-word verbs are the easiest group to get right. If you can see two particles, you already know the word order.

Verbs with no object at all

A third group takes no object. The plane took off. My car broke down. She showed up twenty minutes late. There is nothing to place, so the question never comes up.

It is worth naming this group anyway, because learners sometimes reach for the separable pattern here and produce things like the plane took it off. If a verb has no object, leave the pair alone.

Quick reference

Every verb below appears somewhere in the topic packs on this site. S means separable, I means inseparable, and none means the verb takes no object.

A dictionary marks this per meaning, not per verb, so check the sense you need rather than the spelling.

Long objects go to the end

This one is about weight rather than grammar. A short object sits comfortably in the middle. A long one leaves the particle stranded so far from the verb that the sentence stops making sense as you read it.

So the working version of the rule has three steps. Pronoun goes in the middle, always. Short noun can go either way, pick whichever you like. Long noun goes at the end.

What happens in questions and relative clauses

Sometimes the object leaves the middle of the sentence altogether. Which lights did you turn off? The essay I handed in was late. In both of those the object has moved to the front, and the verb and the particle end up sitting next to each other again.

That is not a new rule and it is not the verb turning inseparable. The object is simply somewhere else in the sentence. Learners occasionally read did you turn off as proof that turn off cannot be split, and then write turn off it a paragraph later. Keep the two situations apart.

With inseparable verbs nothing visible changes at all. Who are you looking after this weekend? The neighbour I look after is ninety-one. The object moves, the pair stays welded together, exactly as before.

The same verb can belong to two groups

Take off is the clearest case. When a plane takes off there is no object and nothing to separate. When you take off your coat there is an object and the verb is separable, so take it off is the only option with a pronoun. Same two words, different behaviour, because the meaning is different.

Look up works the same way. You look a word up in a dictionary, and that is separable. You look up to someone you admire, and that is a three-word verb, so look up to her is right and look her up to is not. This is the reason separability is listed per meaning rather than per verb.

When you meet a familiar verb doing something unfamiliar, treat it as a new verb rather than assuming the pattern carries over.

How to learn this without memorising lists

Learn each verb with a pronoun already attached. Not turn off but turn it off. Not look after but look after it. The pronoun version carries the word order with it, so you never have to recall which list the verb was on.

Then trust your ear. Most learners who read and listen a lot already feel that turn off it is wrong, even when they cannot say why. The rule on this page is mostly there to confirm what you half know and to settle the cases where your ear has nothing to go on.

Lists have their place as a reference, but nobody learns word order by reading a table. Say the sentences out loud a few times instead.

Mistakes worth catching

These five account for most of what goes wrong in practice.

• Not English: Turn off it.
  Correct: Turn it off.

  Separable verb with a pronoun object. The pronoun has to sit in the middle. This is the single most common phrasal verb error.

• Not English: I will look the children after.
  Correct: I will look after the children.

  Look after is inseparable, so the object stays behind the particle no matter how short it is.

• Not English: I cannot put the noise up with.
  Correct: I cannot put up with the noise.

  Three-word verb. Both particles stay attached to the verb.

• Not English: I look forward to hear from you.
  Correct: I look forward to hearing from you.

  The to in look forward to is a preposition, not part of an infinitive, so an -ing form follows it. Worth knowing because this sentence ends a great many emails.

• Not English: She put off it until Monday.
  Correct: She put it off until Monday.

  Same pronoun rule as turn it off. Put off is separable, so it cannot sit after the particle.

Common questions