If I say I took the joke to far, should word be "to" or "too"? I'm going to approach this in a little bit overkill fashion. If you actually meant to use "to", the word is a preposition that expresses a "movement in a direction" (Google Search). Thus "to far" ("far" being an adjective) would be interpreted as a poetic way of saying that the joke was metaphorically transposed to a distant place or different culture (alternatively if the "F" was capitalized in far, then this interpretation would more likely.) However you probably you meant the usual use of "too" in the phrase as meaning to a higher degree. Thus "too far" would mean that the joke was taken to an [unacceptable] extreme level. In any case, a trick to remember when to use either is that you use the "oo" version ("too") when you "need more" (hence why there are two o's instead of one.)