There seems to be some regional variation on this topic, so I will report from my AmE perspective.
In your particular example, either option would be understood to mean the same thing: the speaker works at some point during the course of each weekday (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday).
“From” would probably be omitted in either case as it is not needed to indicate a day range.
Generally speaking, I was always taught to indicate inclusive ranges with the word “through”. This generally has more application in studying mathematics, but could have an impact such as the following:
- Read up through chapter 3.
- Read up to chapter 3.
Receiving instruction #1 with no further clarification, I would read chapters 1, 2, and 3. Instruction #2, on the other hand, presents a quandary. It seems most likely that I’m supposed to read chapters 1 and 2, stopping when I reach the start of chapter 3, and that’s indeed what I would think if I were given no other hint as to the instructor’s wishes.
As you can see there’s a lot of iffiness here, so even among native speakers there is occasionally confusion and/or clarification. A misunderstanding such as the following would not be unheard of:
A: We’ll be on the boat Wednesday to Saturday next week.
B: So you’ll be back on land that Saturday?
A: No, we dock Sunday morning and we’re spending Sunday on the road.
As always, consider your audience and the context. Working those five days is such a common occurrence that neither word is likely to confuse anyone as to what you mean. In other cases, you may wish to add “inclusive” after the range to clarify that the whole of the end-limit you’ve named should be considered part of the deal.
Stray off X is not really a phrasal verb, it means what it says literally. One typically strays off a known path, course, or defined area.
So by saying this:
I strayed off the way home.
you are
- assuming the listener/reader knows what "the way home" is and that it's a known path or course you take home, or:
- indirectly telling the listener/reader there is such a known path or course you take home.
Best Answer
This would be sense 6: "Indicating the relationship between a verb and an indirect object." Sense 6 has two subsenses ("With a verb expressing a mental state" and "Expressing a cause"), but neither of them seems particularly relevant, so that's as far as ODO takes us.
There are no universal rules for which verbs use which prepositions to construe their arguments; rather, you generally have to learn the right prepositions as part of learning the verb.