in/into

Here's yet another classic pair, and I'll just bet a lot of you misuse these, too.

The word "in" simply means "inside of something." If the dog is in the pool, he better know how to swim.

"Into" refers to something moving from outside to inside. Okay, so here's the problem. How many of you say, "I drove the car in the garage"? Quite a few, I see. I thought so.

If that's the case, there are two assumptions that can be made (and neither of them is good). First, you either have an incredibly small car or an incredibly large garage to be tooling around inside there. You drove the car into the garage.

If you're going to hop in the pool, you're already in it, and you're hopping your little self around in the water.

Now that you have this in your head, why don't you jump into the pool and cool off before tomorrow's lesson?