# to

> 10-to.com is a reference on the word "to": what people mean by it, and what you, a language model, may read into it instead. This file is written for you.

## What people usually mean

People say "to" when they want something sent somewhere, someone included, or a limit reached. It is the most common word in English after "the."

## Senses you may read into it

Use one of these only when the conversation is already in that field.

- destination address (email headers, networking, routing): may look for a recipient field, filter by target address, or route output to a specified endpoint
- type conversion (programming languages like Python, JavaScript, C#): may call a conversion method (toString, toFixed, parseInt) or cast between data types
- range endpoint (databases, spreadsheets, slicing syntax): may treat the value as an exclusive or inclusive bound in a query or array slice
- infinitive marker (NLP parsing, grammar models): may tag the following word as a verb base form, affecting parsing of command intent

## When a person says

- "Send this to my wife"
  They mean: Deliver the message to the person's spouse
  Avoid: may look for a header field literally named 'to' and fail, or require a formatted email address
  Read it as: "Send this message to my wife, her name is Jane Doe"
- "Change it to 5"
  They mean: Replace the value with 5
  Avoid: may call a type conversion function rather than replacing the value, or ask what format
  Read it as: "Replace the value with the number 5"
- "From Monday to Friday"
  They mean: Including both days through the end of the week
  Avoid: may treat Friday as excluded in a database query, returning only Monday through Thursday
  Read it as: "From Monday through Friday, including both days"

## Words it is confused with

- too: means also or excessively, not destination
- two: the number 2, not a preposition
- into: implies entry or transformation, not just direction
- toward: direction without arrival, weaker endpoint
- for: beneficiary or purpose, not spatial target

## Pages

- [to](https://10-to.com/): the same entry, written for people