Be careful -- some words have prepositions inside of them.

Yesterday I was talking to someone about an association which he is managing. He's making a website, and he wanted to make a list of all of the members in the organization who are living outside of Japan. For the title of the list, he wanted something short and clear. The question then was:

• Which is correct: "abroad members" or "members abroad"?

My answer is that "members abroad" is correct. The reason is that the word "abroad" is one of the words in English that behaves like it has a preposition at the beginning. "Abroad" means "at a place which is outside of this country". When we use a prepositional phrase to modify a noun, we put it after the noun:

• a house in the country
• a trip to the beach
• a rest for my tired brain

Since "members" is a noun, we should put "abroad" after it. Technically, "abroad" is an adverb. If you think about it this way, the true meaning of "members abroad" is "members who are living abroad", and "who are living" has been omitted.

You can use the same pattern with these words: abroad, aboard, there, here, inside, outside.

• The people aboard the plane were examined for swine flu.
• I've been reading about Mexico in the news. The people there seem afraid of swine flu.
• The people here are also worried about it.
• The people inside might have more to fear, because the air circulation is bad.
• The people outside are the safest, maybe.