Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter! On To (As Part of a Phrasal Verb)
Thus, ‘onto’ is principally used when referring to something that is on top of something else. There’s also a technical definition of ‘onto’ used in mathematics, but even here it borrows the sense of mapping one set of information on top of another.
When I misused a preposition, Kingsley Amis was onto it like a shot. ‘Onto’ can also be used figuratively to mean ‘to understand’ or ‘to be aware of’ something: The rider pictured is not Kingsley Amis, although we’re sure he’d have looked fetching in lace. Kingsley Amis climbed onto his high horse, then fell off immediately. The preposition ‘onto’ is simply a combination of ‘on’ and ‘to’, meaning ‘to position on top of’ something: ‘Onto’ is already common in American English and widely accepted in Australian English.īut there are some occasions when keeping ‘on’ and ‘to’ separate is important for clarity, especially in academic writing, so try to keep the following distinction in mind… Onto (On Top) This, however, fails to reflect how language is used these days. Kingsley Amis went as far as saying that, ‘I have found by experience that no one persistently using “onto” writes anything much worth reading.’ Some grammarians get quite worked up about ‘on to’ and ‘onto’, insisting that ‘on’ and ‘to’ should always be kept separate.
