"In of prison"? Is this correct?

Why does there seem to be such an epidemic of shitty English learning resources?

You can say "in a prison" or "out of prison" but "in of prison" doesn't work.

Most of the ones that say “in of” would make sense with “out of” instead, but it’s nonsense otherwise.

No, none of these are right except the last two. I don't know why they added an "of." It would just be "in prison," "in her element," "in touch," etc.

uh ... are the sentences on the right supposed to be correct?

This is so consistently wrong (unless there's some regional dialect I'm unaware of), it makes me wonder what they were trying to accomplish. OP, any chance you can share where you found this?

Where is this from? Most of it is nonsense.

None of these would use "in of". It would just be "in".

"In of" is wrong for all of these. I can't think of a case where "in of" would be correct. For these expressions it's just "in". For the opposites of these expressions, you would say "out of". This may be what confused the writer.

No. It should be in prison

All of these “in of” examples are wrong. I’m racking my brain trying to think of an example of the “in of” construction and drawing a blank

None of them are correct.

I did a Google N-grams search for three phrases: * trampoline * full of bats * in of prison The 2022 results: * trampoline : 0.0000317373% * full of bats : 0.00000003990% * in of prison 0.0000000000% Trampoline is a word you might hear. "Full of bats" is a phrase that's *very* rarely used but you *might* hear when somebody is describing a cave or abandoned building (or perhaps the trunk of a car of somebody bringing baseball gear to a Little League game), "in of prison" is a phrase that Google hasn't heard of at all. [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=in+of+prison%2Ctrampoline%2Cfull+of+bats&year\_start=1800&year\_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=in+of+prison%2Ctrampoline%2Cfull+of+bats&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3)

"Into" or just "in" should be the opposite of "out of", not "in of".

None of these are correct. What is this supposed to be teaching?

Whoever wrote this seems to think you can make an "out of" phrase into its opposite by changing it to "in of." This is wrong, wrong, wrong. "Out of" and "in" are opposites. There's no "in of."

these are all awful, don’t use that resource

"In of" doesn't really make sense. In all but the last two, it would make much more sense to simply drop "of" and use only "in," i.e. "the criminal was in prison for many years" or "the item is in stock at the store." For the second to last, "they were in difficulty" doesn't really work. Better would be something like "they were in a difficult situation" or "they were in trouble." For the last, I see no problem with it. "The treasure was in sight of the explorer" makes perfect sense.

“in of” is ungramatical, but “out of” is grammatical though

In difficulty, and in sight are correct. All the other ones are wrong

The only ‘in of’ phrase I can think of is ‘in of itself’, and that’s not here…

in american english, no.

The only one in this picture that's correct is "in sight". Everything else is wrong, and I'd probably be confused for a second if I heard these. I would not trust this website, whatever it is, in the future

It's weird. We would say "out of" for most is not all of those, but just "in".

"in of" is always incorrect. Whoever wrote these examples was not a native speaker and I'd question if they're really fluent as these are very unusual forms.

This is not accurate. It is confusing. People don’t speak like this. The instructions and example are grammatically incorrect and incoherent.

This is not accurate. It is confusing. People don’t speak like this. The instructions and example are grammatically incorrect and incoherent.

IN OF… unless this is a poorly communicated “pick one but not both”, I can’t even guess how the two prepositions came to be side by side. That never happens in English.

This is not accurate. It is confusing. People don’t speak like this. The instructions and example are grammatically incorrect and incoherent.

None of this is correct except "in sight of"

Looks like an exercise where you’re supposed to choose the one that’s correct to me

It looks like you're supposed to choose "in" **OR** "of" for each of these answers. -- She was **in** her element at the dance competition. The criminal was **in** prison for many years. The item is **in** stock at the store. The tool is **of** use for the project. etc

Never heard of

Yea.... none of those with "of" make sense. Looks like someone saw "out of prison, out of stock out of..." and transferred it to the opposite, but that's not right

I thought it was a joke at first - because most if these are pretty common phrases with the word "out". Out of sight, out of use, out of prison... But then there's "in difficulty" and now I'm just confused. Whatever it's supposed to mean, none of it seems right to me.

None of those are correct. We do use “in of” in that manner in English. If you omit the word “of” then everything is correct. I have no clue where you got this information.

This looks like a 'spots the errors' assignment.

I think you are supposed to choose either "in" or "of," whichever is correct for the sentence. Maybe there was supposed to be a slash between "in" and "of" and you are supposed to circle the correct one or something like that.

It's funny how many learning materials pop up on this subreddit which are just dead wrong.

I don’t know from where these crappy learning tools keep coming. “In of” is ungrammatical in all the examples, and it’s rarely grammatical as is.

I’m impressed, this might be the worst thing I’ve seen on this subreddit. Every single one of these is wrong

"They were in difficulty after the car broke down." This one correct, the rest are nonsense.

None of these are correct except for "in sight", and maybe "in difficulty" (but that isn't a phrase I've ever heard anyone use). "In of" sounds bizarre.

I feel for English learners with some of the terrible resources that are out there.

u/paranoidkitten00 , most of your examples use two consecutive prepositions (a word that answers the question where, when, or how). In English, consecutive prepositions are very rare, but I do not know of a rule that forbids them. If I come across one, I'll edit the comment. In any event, such use would generally be redundant and possibly contradictory or confusing. English preposition use can also be notoriously illogical and very idiomatic, as in other languages. Like spelling, preposition use in a given context often has to be memorized. Your sentence, "They were in difficulty after the car broke down" is the only sentence presented which is not problematic. Note that, in that sentence: 1. "in" answers the "where" question, albeit not in a geographic sense, while "after" answers the "when" question. The words answer ***different*** questions. 2. It does not run afoul of my putative rule about consecutive prepositions. Hope than helps.

The only correct one is the last, "in sight of". Even if someone's trying to pass them off as a regional dialect, they should be facing backlashes pretty often. Like asking a fat person to be your personal trainer, this is the English equivalent of learning from an incompetent "teacher".

“in of prison” isn’t a standard phrase. You had usually just say "in prison" (like: *He’s in prison*), or "out of prison" (like: *She just got out of prison*). English prepositions are a tough one…

I've never seen this "in of" construction. Sometimes English in India uses phrases that are considered archaic elsewhere, maybe that's the case?

none of those "of" formations should be there.

That chart is beyond horrible

Er... no

I don't know if this course materials, or a student's work. But as a native speaker, every single one of these is incorrect.

I read it as an exercise where you select the correct one for example In prison In stock Of use

I think they were trying to say 'in and out of...' but then again, it doesn't make sense with all of them. These are all wrong.

I have literally never heard anyone ever say “in of” before

None of these are correct. I’ve never heard any one say “in of” in any situation. I’ve also never heard anyone say “in difficulty” either.

"In of" is not correct in any circumstance. "Out of" works great in all of these sentences. Looking at the first few, my original guess was the intended phrase to learn was "In and out of" which is commonly used with things like "prison" and "focus" and certainly makes sense with "element" and "stock" and even "season" (though the latter would have a somewhat different meaning to the others). "Touch" certainly works too - "The Prime Minister has been in and out of touch with voters at various times in her political career" - but it doesn't work with the example sentence because a painting is a static thing that doesn't change over time. To be clear: the opposite of "out of" is "into" or "in" depending on whether you're describing a state ("in") or a process of change ("into"). You "go into prison/focus" but you "are in prison/focus". The confusing thing is that "out of" is used for both - you "come out of prison" and you "are out of prison" also. An image can "go out of focus" (implying it was in focus before) and it can also "be out of focus" (implying that is how it's been the whole time - for example a photograph).

I wouldn’t use in and of together like this. I would say in a prison or inside of a prison. Same with, in a season or inside of a season. In one’s element. With stock and touch you don’t need of unless you are saying it’s out. For example: In stock/Out of stock. In touch/Out of touch. In use/Out of use. You can say a product is “in season” as almost an adjective and “out of season”. I don’t really hear anyone use “in difficulty”. I hear more commonly they were in trouble or they were in danger or they were in a bad situation. Also I think in sight (of) / out of sight is correct. You can say the boat is in sight/out of sight.

get rid of of in each instance

The only one of these that I can call correct is in sight (of). If anything, MAYBE "in difficulty" is grammatically correct for some folks but I would never say that and it sounds awkward to me. The rest of these are all incorrect.

In the USA this usage would be in of idiotic.

It looks like a search/replace went haywire. For one of the lines, you can use _either_, but not both: the tool is in use (common), the tool is of use (in some cases). The meaning is different! For all the others, at least in the context of the example sentences, only “in” works.

"In" or "out of" but never "in of".

I would never use why of those and have never heard them. The closest I have heard is 'in of itself'. But I have never used that either

Almost none of these are correct. I think the last two are fine.

This is wrong.

Could your assignment be asking you to circle **either** the word *in* or the word *of*, whichever is correct in that sentence?

Replace the word in with out and they all work.

I would guess this is supposed to read something like: In / out of X In one’s element / out of one’s element This works with all but not difficulty (which is why it doesn’t have the mistaken “of” listed I would imagine). Although out of difficulty is not incorrect it is not common (as opposed to out of danger or similar).

none of these are correct

In English it's sometimes hard to decide whether to use "in," "into," "within," "inside," or "inside of." It should be easier to decide about "in of" since we never say "in of." Native speaker of American English, born before 1950 near the center of the USA.

I think someone had an aneurysm writing this, but if it instead were "off of prison", that could be correct, with it being a colloquialism

It looks like these are all the wrong versions of the opposite of "out of". "He is in prison / He is out of prison"

Neither of these are correct, its all incorrect English.