It’s phrasal verb hell
What do you do with the verb “to log in” — specifically the preposition part?
“You are logging into <whatever>”
versus
“You are logging in to <whatever>”.
Does this mean there are two verbs, “to log into” and “to log in”?
Mayhap we will never know, my friends. Mayhap we will never know.
:(
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Ah. It really ought to be “in to”. I guess the problem is that at the end of the day clearly “into” has emerged from eliding “in to”, which itself created some grammatical consistency elsewhere in the system.
Is there a real difference between “go in to the cinema” and “go into the cinema”? … Well, on reflection, the former seems meaningless somehow. So what’s wrong?
Ooooh! Another way to look at it is this: phrasal verbs with “in” (eg go in, log in) cannot have direct objects. If you wish to add an object you have to use the non-phrasal verb and use “into” plus the object.
That is a really exciting discovery, and I think it will stand up to some user testing now.