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#83802 10/18/02 05:15 PM
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wwh Offline OP
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I won't go so far as to call it a pet peeve, but the use of "try and" instead of "try to"
seems undesirable. From New Scientist, 5 Oct 2002, p41 about preserving wrecked ships
in museums: ".... the best long term solution for most wrecks was not to try and
conserve them out of the water but simply to bury them once again."

I think the editor would have been justified in replacing "to try and" with "to try to".
Comment invited.


#83803 10/18/02 06:24 PM
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Quite agree, Dr Bill. If the phrase had been something on the lines of, "I will try and if I fail I will try something else", fair enough. But the phrase you quote should most definitely be, "I will try to conserve ...".


#83804 10/18/02 06:44 PM
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mostly agree, but this is a fairly common (older) usage of and:

10. Connecting two verbs the latter of which would logically be in the infinitive, esp. after go, come, send, try; familiarly and dialectally after various others.
[1526 Tindale Acts xi. 4 Peter began and expounde the thinge.] 1671 Milton P.R. i. 224 At least to try and teach the erring soul. 1780 Mrs. Thrale Let. 10 June (1788) II. 150 Do go to his house, and thank him. 1819 Moore in N.Q. Ser. i. (1854) IX. 76/1 Went to the theatre to try and get a dress. 1878 Jevons Prim. Pol. Econ. 42 If every trade were thus to try and keep all other people away. Mod. You will come and see us sometimes, won't you?



#83805 10/19/02 01:43 AM
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I agree, Dr Bill. The "try and" substitution for what should be "try to" is very common; I find myself mentally correcting it all the time.


#83806 10/19/02 01:47 AM
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I also absolutely agree with you, Bill. This ranks up high along with 'wait on' for 'wait for', as in, "I waited on her for 45 minutes." To which I always feel like replying with something like, "Oh, did she eat her dinner that fast?"


#83807 10/19/02 03:08 AM
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"try and" rather than "try to" is as bad, IMHO, as the transpondial tendency to posit "visit with" rather than just "visit". When I hear one of our Merckan colleagues say "visit with", it's like two people have met to go and visit some third person ...



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#83808 10/19/02 03:13 AM
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So, in the interests of consistency, do all you who so scrupulously try to avoid "try and" exercise no less diligence in avoiding the equally "incorrect" examples quoted by tsuwm? Or do you apply a selective disdain, reserving it only for "try and"?


#83809 10/19/02 03:42 AM
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I dunno, CapK... I'd like to hear Jackie's and Wordwind's take on this -- but to me "visit with" means something different from, and larger than, plain ol' "visit." In the South (of the US, mind you) when you visit with someone you hang around for a while and chat, gossip, drink bourbon and trade grits recipes.

~back to the matter at hand: "try and" has never been part of my speech. I always kinda considered it a Britishism.

#83810 10/19/02 04:32 AM
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Assigning an arbitrary meaning to something doesn't make it correct by redefinition. And quoting people with an insecure grasp of the language simply because they made their errors a long time ago and then conveniently died before we could beat up on them doesn't make them correct by redefinition, either!

The misuse of "try and" to mean "try to" is not a transpondial issue. I hear it from people from all over who claim to speak some flavour of the English language. Probably including me from time to time.

So I guess that eventually to say "I'll try and do something about it" will become the accepted and correct grammar and people who say "I'll try to do something about it" will be seen as merely old gits displaying an archaic usage which should be put down with a shovel. And then, of course, they will quoted by some future tsuwm in spurious support of the unsupportable!

[/rant]



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#83811 10/19/02 05:52 AM
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It's the inconsistency I find so delicious. I happen to agree that "try and" is just plain wrong. Yet, I wouldn't hesitate to say "come and see us some time." Surely, if one is wrong the other is, yet one irritates us, while the other is already standard. Which divinity gets to call the shape of these ends?


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