Sometimes You Just Need
Spotted: 9/19/2016
Creator: Word Porn
Okay, this one is tricky, but the people over at Word Porn really should know better. The problem I’d like to address is in the final line, where it says you need to “give into sadness.”
Give in is a phrasal verb, which is one of the trickiest parts of English. A phrasal verb consists of a verb and either a preposition (more common) or an adverb (less common). Usage can be really tricky. For example, some phrasal verbs can be split up. You could say, “Be careful not to burn down the house.” Equally correct is, “Be careful not to burn the house down.” Though it’s not a hard and fast rule, you can generally only split phrasal verbs that have a direct object.
Since give in is a phrasal verb, it’s incorrect to combine the preposition particle in with the to that precedes sadness. It all depends on how you interpret the sentence:
- [give in] to sadness
- give [in to] sadness
The first is clearly correct, given the phrasal nature of give in. Whoever created this meme went with the second interpretation, which completely changes the meaning.
I see this a lot in tech documentation. The phrasal verb log in is very often misrepresented in sentences like, “Next, log into the system with your user name and password.” It really should be “log in to the system.”
Also, I suspect that “You need to learn now to pick yourself up” also contains a typo. I would guess that now actually should’ve been how. But it works in its current form.
Here’s the corrected meme:
