1

This question destroys my mind so finally I want to know the answer.

All I have to do is + to + verb

or

All I have to do is + verb

Which one is correct, and can't the wrong one be correct informally?

deadrat
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PrisonPants
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  • If the Everly Brothers had sung "Whenever I want you, all I have to do is to dream," it would have ruined the meter of the line. And to what end? Merely to make explicit an infinitive marker that everyone recognized as implicit anyway. – Sven Yargs Feb 04 '16 at 06:41

3 Answers3

2

The second (without 'to') is more common, but both are grammatical.

GloWBe (The Corpus of Global Web-based English) has 210 instances without 'to' and 52 with 'to'.

Colin Fine
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1

The second option is the more correct structure.

To explain it as simply as possible, you have to do in the middle of the sentence already. To do is an infinitive verb because the unsuffixed action word do is preceded by the preposition to (which is actually part of the infinitive verb, not just preceding it).

With that, you are now wondering if the verb at the end of the sentence should also be infinitive. It shouldn't simply because the previous infinitive verb, to do, already includes the preposition to, therefore the last verb doesn't need it.

I see this as a simple example of how English tends to reduce repetitive words as much as possible. In your first example, to is found before both verbs. But since that's repetitive, the to can be removed from the second verb and essentially shared from the first verb.

Adam
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  • Do you have a source that says that redundancy is erroneous? The double to-infinitive is common. – deadrat Feb 03 '16 at 04:05
  • @deadrat Unfortunately I don't have a specific source for this, but I do have an example using another situation: a simple listing structure. I read lots of books, lots of newspapers, and lots of magazines can be simplified to I read lots of books, newspapers, and magazines. Redundancy is eliminated for conciseness. Note that I never claimed redundancy to be erroneous. – Adam Feb 03 '16 at 04:24
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    Perhaps I misconstrued "the correct structure" in the (original) first sentence of your answer. But conciseness is a matter style, not grammar. – deadrat Feb 03 '16 at 04:49
  • @Adam: in my answer I show (admittedly in a smallish sample) that the 'to' is used in about 20% of cases. It would appear that it is used. On what do you base your assertion that it is less "correct"? – Colin Fine Feb 03 '16 at 10:41
  • @Adam if we don't use the second "to" because of the first one , so what do you think about All i do is + verb or All i do is + **to** + verb ? – PrisonPants Feb 03 '16 at 21:36
0

I think it's easier if we assume that this sentence is "cut down" versions of the [hypothetical]...

1a: All I have to do is I have to finish it soon.

Sometimes native speakers will delete the repeatation, it's not a big problem.

Rizki Pratiwi
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