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In Goggle Ngram Viewer I found these sentences:

  1. How are you enabled to say it was Monday that you saw him?

  2. It was Monday that I was sworn as a witness.

  3. It was on Monday that he called at my house.

  4. It was on Monday when I met Mrs. Surratt at Unlontown.

  5. It was Monday when I picked the report up.

I have to questions regarding it:

  1. The first thing is that I can't figure out when to use "that" or "when" in such cases.In other words,in what situations should I lean towards "when" and when - towards "that" if we speak about time?
  2. And the second thing I don't understand is why the preposition "on" can be omitted before "Monday" in some of these sentences. We can't say "I did it Monday" or "I met her Tuesday". So what's the reason for skipping the preposition?
tchrist
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Marie Mit
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    There is not much difference. Perhaps "It was Monday when I picked up the report" is a reply to "Which day did you pick up the report?" while "It was on Monday when I picked up the report" is a reply to "When did you pick up the report?" and if no question was asked then you could use either. – Henry Jul 22 '21 at 09:46
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    My first reaction is that I would say either "it was Monday when something", or "it was on Monday that something". You have three examples that don't follow this, and all seem slightly awkward to me. – Peter Jul 22 '21 at 09:50
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    "I did it Monday" is common, especially in the US: see https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/84472/should-there-be-a-preposition-before-a-day-e-g-monday – Stuart F Jul 22 '21 at 10:10
  • @StuartF Notice how you can freely swap out Monday for any of this morning, the other day, yesterday, last night, last week, last month, last June, last year, the last time I saw you — just not 2020. – tchrist Jul 22 '21 at 11:54
  • "How are you enabled to say etc.?" is really an outlier. Makes it sound like a robot is being addressed. – Lambie Jul 22 '21 at 13:50
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    Prepositions in English are just "grammatical elements" - they're only really there to specify (or even just hint) how the different "content words" in an utterance should be interpreted (how they relate to each other). There would rarely be a context where anyone needs guidance to understand how a word like *Monday* relates to the rest of the containing utterance, so nothing of value is lost when we discard it. And a common reason for discarding anything is simply that it's *unnecessary*. – FumbleFingers Jul 22 '21 at 15:11

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