I'm used to hearing "in quest of..." as an equivalent for "in pursuit
of..." -- I'm wondering if "in a quest" is the result of "on a quest"
blurring into "in quest of," rather like we've recently gotten a lot of
examples of "on accident" from the collision (I know, bad pun) between
"by accident" and "on purpose."

Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of MC Johnstone
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 6:41 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On a quest

Claudia Kiburz wrote:
> For me the differences are in focus.
>
> "In a quest": One has been placed into a quest.Focus might be more on 
> how one got there, not where one is going. It seems more static. I 
> would not use it very often.  "We are in this quest now because our 
> teacher told us to find some information."

I did a cursory search on Google, plain vanilla, for "in a quest" and 
"on a quest". Both turned up around a quarter of a million hits, 
surprisingly with "in a quest" scoring the slightly higher number. I'd 
never heard "in a quest" before, but I've been living in a non-English 
speaking country for fifteen years now so I've missed out on quite a 
lot. From looking at them briefly, they seem to be interchangeable. I 
suspect that some people use "in" while others use "on" and never the 
twain shall meet. 

Mark
>
>
> "On a quest": One has decided to go after something. The focus is on 
> the end.
>
> "In quest of": The focus is on process
>
> However, the last two could be interchangeable; again, one might wish 
> to use one rather than the other for focus, as I hear the phrases.
>
> We are now "in quest of" more input on this topic ... no end in sight.
>
> */Dee Allen-Kirkhouse <[log in to unmask]>/* wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>     My colleague has a question raised by her high school seniors who
>     want to know the difference between "in a quest" and "on a
>     quest."   I say "in quest of" and "on a quest for," but they may
>     be the same idea.  Also "in a quest" seems to be equivalent to
>     being in the process of a quest.  Any thoughts?
>      
>     Dee
>      
>      
>     Dee Allen-Kirkhouse
>      
>      
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