[Ana laura]

Hi,

I would like to know which sentence is correct when I want to say 'I was on the chair'.

1) I was seated at my desk

2) I was sitting at my desk


Thanks in advance

[susan53]

Both are correct, but "seated" is more formal. In normal everyday conversation, and informal or neutral written style, we'd use "sitting".

If you feed them into a concordancer - I used the Cobuild concordancer - you'll see that the examples that come up for seated are all from formal written English, for example :

• Ensure the casualty is seated or lying down whilst being treated.
• ... has the necessary space for those seated, whilst retaining an interesting appearance.
• ... such as one of Josef's dreams. Fat lawyers seated stuffing themselves, urging him to eat at the ..
• ...of the British Defence Minister, Mr Tom King seated behind a model of one of the tanks which is ..

whereas for sitting, while there are still plenty of written examples, spoken examples come up too :

• I mean I know somebody who's you know sitting in a wheelchair after a spinal injury thirty
• That's what your dad says isn't it we were sitting in the car and she lent over and a fag fell
• I'd have a conversation and he'd be sitting on the settee and I'd be having a
• Easy for Warrington. Andy from where you're sitting what a great game Gary Pallister's having

[Ana laura]

Thank you very much