The six-hexagon image shows examples of the difference between two types of phrasal verbs: separable and inseparable. The separable ones here have a more literal meaning. They are also transitive, meaning that you must use them with a direct object. Let’s take ‘zip up’ for example:
Before leaving the house, make sure you zip up your bag.
The object of ‘zip up’ is bag. This phrasal verb with this meaning is not only transitive but separable. What does that mean? You can put the object between the verb and the particle:
Make sure you zip your bag up.
You could choose to use a pronoun instead:
Make sure you zip it up.
But, for this category of phrasal verb you must remember that if you do use a pronoun instead of a noun, you must put it between the verb and the pronoun. So something like this would be wrong:
*Make sure you zip up it.
Try making sentences in context with these:
Shut it up. Roll it up. Pick it up. Turn it up. And break it up.
Regarding the other type of phrasal verb, the intransitive one, it does not take an object and the meaning is a little less obvious and more idiomatic. This means that the meaning is not predictable from the two words put together; it has a meaning of its own that can be understood from its context. Let’s look at ‘zip up’ again, but this time I will use it intransitively with another meaning: be quite.
I’m trying to watch the news on TV. Would you zip up! I can’t hear!
Try making sentences in context like the following:
She shut up. The car rolled up. Her English picked up. The bride turned up. And they broke up.
My hope is that your English picks up.
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