Enter into

Towards more picturesque speech™ →Go uptown SEC guidance on plain EnglishIndex: Click ᐅ to expand: Plain English Drafting Metaphor Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

In which one does not need the preposition “into” seeing as, by definition, entering something — even a legal contract — is “going into it”. Yet even stylists as fine as the draftsperson of A Manual of Style For the Drafting of Contractual Instruments — whose very title betrays its author as the sort of fellow whose idea of “style” is a waistcoat and pantaloons — find the thought of omitting that preposition oddly “unnatural”.

Nonetheless, the resourceful draftsperson will insist on entering into legal agreements (and might correct your draft if you neglect to do so). Indeed, one with a higher dan might even chain his or her prepositions together, tether them to a passive and speak reverently of a transaction “entered into under this agreement”.