Toe in the Water

A Trying Subject

A Trying Subject

Just been slapped in the face with it again. One of my oldest grammatical bugbears that still succeeds in raising my blood pressure, getting me fuming and ruining my day. Why, I think silently at the page, why? It’s so simple and makes no sense at all the way you’re saying it.

Let’s take a brief look and see what we can do about it. You want to say, “Let’s try and do something.” But that’s not what you mean. Cover up the last three words in the sentence and what have you got? “Let's try.” The immediate question that must spring to mind is “Try what?” And your answer will be, ”To do something.” Not “And do something.” So the original sentence should be “Try to do something.” Now we know exactly what we’re going to attempt.

This horrible phrase “try and do” makes no sense at all. It means literally that you’re going to try (to play the guitar, milk a cow, talk backwards, anything) and, at the same time, you’re going to do something else (go to the moon, fish for trout, stand on your head, whatever). Good luck with that. We would only say “try” without adding the word “to” if we’ve already established what is to be tried.

So we might say, “Jump over that fence.” To which, the answer might be, “I’ll try.” It’s the only exception I can think of where the verb “try” doesn’t immediately demand a “to” after it. It’s hardly rocket science.

Now you can go on at me about the language changing and new forms becoming accepted. Yeah, and one day it’ll be so changed that it’ll be useless for communicating with any precision at all. At least let’s try to keep those forms that make a modicum of sense. I know we all (except me) say “try and” when speaking but, please, in print let’s show we know the correct form by writing “try to.”


Word count: 326