The English Oracle

Filter by or with?

--------------------------------------------------
Hire the world's top talent on demand or became one of them at Toptal: https://topt.al/25cXVn
--------------------------------------------------

Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Ominous Technology Looping

--

Chapters
00:00 Filter By Or With?
00:15 Accepted Answer Score 12
01:03 Thank you

--

Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...

--

Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

--

Tags
#wordchoice #prepositions #bywith

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 12


To choose either 'by' or 'with', you need to see if the phrase/word that comes next indicates a method or an instrument. If you want to show a method, you use by. If it's an instrument with which the activity was done, you use with:

  • I opened the bottle by removing the cap

  • I opened the bottle with a corkscrew

  • I hit him by using a bat (the method is using something)

  • I hit him with a bat

In your case, 'names' are a method used for filtering users list, not an instrument. So, you have to use 'by'. See the examples below:

I want to filter the users list by names

I want to filter the users list with a software that filters user lists by name