All grammars of the English language resort to a classification of words into “parts of speech” or syntactic categories and none of them can do without prepositions. Even though the class seems to be well-established, a number of divergences appear in the way prepositions are dealt with. The main points at issue are discussed through a comparison of two major handbooks: Quirk et al., Contemporary Grammar of the English Language (1985) which represents the traditional approach to prepositions and Huddleston & Pullum et al., Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002) which adopts a significantly different conception.