I have one or two posts on Grammar Glitch Central that correct the use of INTO in connection with perpetrators turning themselves into police officers.  Today's suspect did something even more unusual.  He turned himself into the jail!  Consider this sentence from The Birmingham News:

(The man) turned himself into the jail, sheriff's officials said Sunday.

 As I have pointed out before, there is a difference in usage between INTO and IN TO. You can say that you walked INTO the drugstore or you fell INTO a ditch or you transformed yourself INTO a happy person.  In each case, you are creating a prepositional phrase that describes where or what (INTO the drugstore, INTO a ditch, INTO a happy person).

TURN IN, on the other hand, is a verb plus an adverb.  Used together, TURN IN means to give over to someone or something else, as in "The man turned himself IN TO the police." or "Alice WILL TURN IN her keys before she leaves the building."

I am certain that the man arrested in the shooting death at a Forestdale convenience store recently did NOT become the Jefferson County Jail! He simply went there to TURN HIMSELF IN.  This sentence would be much clearer and simpler with this wording:

 (The man) turned himself in at the jail, sheriff's officials said Sunday.

I have read several news stories recently about Eagle Scout candidate Dane Smith who gathered volunteers to help clear an overgrown section of the new Bristoe Station Battlefield Heritage Park near Washington, D. C. About 90 soldiers from the Tenth Alabama Infantry Regiment camped there and died in an outbreak of disease in the summer of 1861.

Since the first stories appeared, the park has received new information from families of these soldiers and has added to its documentation.

One sentence in The Birmingham News story about this caught my eye last week because the reporter apparently confused the word ANCESTOR with the word DESCENDANT:

Following a story in The News about the cemetery's rebirth, several ancestors, amateur genealogists and historic preservationists contacted park officials with information.

Whoops! The word ANCESTORS would refer to the previous generation family members who died at Bristoe.  It is much more likely that it was their DESCENDANTS who contacted the park officials. Attention to correct vocabulary makes for much better writing.  The sentence should read this way:

Following a story in The News about the cemetery's rebirth, several descendants, amateur genealogists and historic preservationists contacted park officials with information.

Congratulations to sixteen-year-old Dane Smith on a creative and important Eagle Scout project.

Here is a Glitch I haven't seen before: Using QUE when it should be CUE.  The sentence appeared in a column called "Ask a Landscaper" in Sunday's The Birmingham News. Brian Bell was writing about how a tree or shrub spends its life:

It (the tree or shrub) takes its hints and ques from nature, as the seasons roll through.

To my knowledge, the word QUE, which means WHAT in Spanish, does not exist in English.  There is the very British QUEUE, which refers to a group of people waiting in what Americans call "a line," and there is CUE, which means a signal, as in someone whispering a hint to an actor who has forgotten his lines.  The word CUE can also refer to the stick used in playing the game of pool, but I believe the columnist wanted the first meaning, which is similar to HINT. The sentence should have been written this way:

It (the tree or shrub) takes its hints and cues from nature, as the seasons roll through.

Brian Bell had some good advice for gardeners: Opposite to what we would suppose, the best time to plant trees and shrubs is in the fall (not the spring) so they can grow strong roots underground during the colder months before they have to put out the showy leaves and blooms in the warmer months.  Now that he has explained it, that makes sense to me!