“Plugging in X” vs. “plugging X in”

Question

Does one say

Plugging in that value into the previous equation...

or

Plugging that value in the previous equation...

or something else?

pluggin in into is for sure wrong - if you remove the in in the first sentence I think you will be fine
Well... I have used "substitute" many times in my text. Therefore I have sometimes decided to plug in "plug in" instead of "substitute" ;-)

Matt Эллен · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-30 11:12:42Z

up vote 6 down vote accepted

A combination of your two examples would be correct:

Plugging that value into the previous equation..

In this sentence you are dealing with the phrasal verb 'plug in', which has then been split by the noun ('that value').

edited Oct 30 '11 at 11:12

Matt Эллен
14.3k33483

answered Apr 11 '11 at 6:24

Karl
3,8251020

	I did not have any documentation for my suggestion so I made it a comment.. – mplungjan Apr 11 '11 at 9:13
	@mplungjan: Thank you for your comment as well. I upgraded it! – Marco Apr 12 '11 at 19:20

Kevin · Answer 2 · 2011-04-11 14:46:39Z

up vote 1 down vote

Either "Plug in that value" or "plug that value into" are fine depending on the rest of the sentence, but not "Plug in that value into".

answered Apr 11 '11 at 14:46

Kevin
3,618922

	Removing the in could fix the sentence. – Noah Jun 8 '12 at 23:48
	@Noah That's what I said. – Kevin Jun 11 '12 at 19:38

2 Answers