OK, I am having a hard time here, can someone please help me?

Elsewhere, someone said, "we're depending on newcomers"...

I hear this frequently.."we're depending on you".

Shouldn't it be "upon"?

It's like telling someone to "go in the room". I certainly hope the room they are talking about is a bathroom, or restroom! But if the idea conveyed is to walk from here to the interior of the other room, it would be "go into the room".

Is the usage of upon vs. on the same as the usage of into vs. in in these examples?

I believe "on" and "upon" are often interchangable, especially after the word "depend." "We depend on newcomers" and "We depend upon newcomers" convey identical meanings. To me, anyway.

To my ear, flawed as it may occasionally be, the preposition "upon" conveys motion as in "Climb upon my knee, Sonny Boy."

In fact, "We're depending upon you" sounds just the very slightest bit off. "The vultures were preying upon you," yes, but otherwise I think the difference is so slight as to be negligible.

Now, "to go in the room" is simply incorrect if, as you say, your meaning is to enter the room from outside.

Morgan, it is so funny that you started this thread. Just yesterday I had a similar question. I was writing an e-mail to an editor who is going to publish some of our material. I first wrote, "I will forward these onto you", realized my error, and quickly changed it to "on to you." I had visions of my throwing them onto her lap!

Depend on/upon is a phrasal verb. I've checked a few sources and they all give equal weight to both versions which leads me to think it may be just a matter of personal style or perhaps those ever popular "regional variations".

Of course there is also the other phrasal "depend from" where depend has theentirely different meaning of "hang".

Non curo ! Si metrum no habet, non est poema.

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