It's Thursday, and time for another lesson from the English
teacher! Today I'll explain the proper usage of two tiny but
important words: to and too. Lately I've noticed that many
people--even really smart people who are good writers--have
trouble with these little words. Like many words in the English
language that present problems, these two words are homonyms. Of
course, homonyms give us no trouble when we're speaking. Since
they all sound alike, someone listening to us just hears the
word and decides on the right meaning in the context of the
sentence. When we're writing, though, it's up to us to choose
which word is correct. To is a preposition that indicates
direction, such as in these sentences: I'm leaving now to pick
up Mary from her piano lesson. Lee, give this to your brother.
Can you teach me how to use this word correctly? Too is an
adverb that means also, extra, or very. I want to go, too!
There's too much ice on the tree branches. I'm afraid we'll have
a power outage before too long. He's not t