Home In On Or Hone In On

Home can be verb referring to finding one s way to a destination such as homing pigeons and homing missiles do.

So getting back to the quick and dirty tip to find something or get closer to something you home in on it or zero in on it. Hone in is also acceptable but far less common and comes from the meaning of hone referring to sharpening or making more acute. Home in is the older standard variant. It means to sharpen something and to remember that you can think of a honing stone for sharpening a knife.

As a simple rule of thumb if you write the sentence and need the phrase in on after the verb it s most likely home if not you probably need to use hone. To hone something is different. Home in means to get closer to like a missile homing in on its target while hone in means to pay close attention to or listen to something. In the same sense one can home in on the answer for example.

You can remember to use home in by thinking of a homing pigeon on the roof of a castle. To home in on something is to narrow one s focus or to grow nearer to a conclusion. Trying to group the two sayings together as one and decide which one is correct is pointless and unnecessary.