On-time. In-time, are they the same or are they different? On-time just means not late. But in-time shows that there is a deadline. To make this a bit clearer, let's actually look-at the opposite of these. If you are not on-time, that simply means that you are late. It is not clear if this will affect anything. It might be a problem. It might not be a problem. But if you are not in-time, this means that you missed the deadline for something. Your opportunity to do something is now gone. You can't do the thing that you wanted to do because you are too late. This is a problem. John never wakes-up on-time. This simply means that John always wakes-up later than planned. We don't know if this is a problem or not. John never wakes-up in-time for breakfast. Here in-time for breakfast shows us that he can never eat breakfast because he wakes-up too late. At the time that he wakes-up, breakfast is no longer available. Sarah didn't get-there on-time. This simply tells us that Sarah got there late. We have no idea if this actually affected anything. We have no idea. If this was really a problem. But if we say Sarah didn't get-there in-time, this focuses on the fact that she got there too late and she was not able to do the thing that she planned to do. In this situation, we would probably include the words for something or to do something. For example, Sarah didn't get-there in-time to join the class. She got there too late and she wasn't allowed to enter the classroom. Sarah didn't get-there in-time for the meeting. When she got there, the meeting was over and everybody was gone. So on-time and in-time are very similar. But on-time simply focuses on whether-or-not you were late. In-time focuses on the result of you being late or not being late. Whether you in the thing that you are trying to do or you fail in the thing that you are trying to do.