Thursday, January 20, 2011

Into

Here's a funny example I came across while editing this week:


If any of our readers have any specific questions they can send them into us.


See the problem? Apparently we're taking our questions and sending them literally inside of these people. Perhaps we are supposed to communicate telepathically? Or perhaps "questions" is some sort of either food or sexual reference that I don't understand? That's all possible, I guess, but it's probably not what they mean. What they're trying to say is:


If any of our readers have any specific questions they can send them in to us.

The lesson: just because "in" and "to" are next to each other doesn't mean you have to combine them. Can you imagine if you had to do that with everything in life? "Well, I left the baking soda and the vinegar next to each other again. I guess it's time for another volcano." While volcanoes are fun, you don't have to make one every time the baking soda gets near the vinegar. It's the same way with "in" and "to," only you don't make a volcano; you make the word "into."

With some exceptions, it's pretty easy to know when to use "into" and when to use "in to." Observe:


We turned our answer in to the host of the trivia contest.
We turned our answer into the host of the trivia contest.

Those two sentences have very different meanings. The first one means you have given your answer to the trivia contest host. The second one means your answer is now hosting a trivia contest. That usually wouldn't work so well. Here's another one:


I'm just checking in to see how you're doing.
I'm just checking into see how you're doing.

The thing you're doing is checking in, so the words would need to stay separate. Make sense? It's pretty easy. Here's one more example:

We put the parrot into his cage.
We put the parrot in to his cage.

The first sentence means the parrot is now inside of his cage. The second sentence doesn't make sense.

Is any of this clicking? Sure it is. It's really not too difficult, and it falls under my Golden Rule of English: if it sounds stupid, it's probably wrong.

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