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Which of the following sentences is correct?

I am thinking to invest in stocks.
I am thinking investing into stocks.

apaderno
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Anderson Silva
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5 Answers5

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Your first sentence is a fairly common structure, but it is somewhat informal, to say the least. I would not recommend non-native speakers experimenting with such non-standard forms.

The second sentence is simply ungrammatical.

The standard phrasing is...

I am thinking of investing in stocks.

FumbleFingers
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    Just to clarify for the OP - there are two changes needed. You need "of" between "thinking" and a gerund, such as "investing"; and we say "investing in", not "investing into" – MT_Head Jun 20 '11 at 17:52
  • @MT_Head: Agreed. I just didn't want to get bogged down in the precise grammar of why OP's first sentence is 'non-standard', and yet still can occur. That's a more complicated issue that I don't think really applies at this level. – FumbleFingers Jun 20 '11 at 18:03
  • @Fumble (do you get notifications if I shorten it like that? Hope so!) - That's why I added it as a comment, rather than editing your answer; I thought your priorities were correct, but that some clarification might help if the OP needed to write a similar phrase in the future. – MT_Head Jun 20 '11 at 18:06
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    @FumbleFingers I'm sorry to sound contentious, I don't know any other way to say this: Please justify why you said that the first sentence was a fairly common structure. Where is it common? The answer here should be that neither sentence is correct, and that the final sentence of your response is in fact the correct way of phrasing the question. I just can't imagine saying it in any other way than what you suggested. – Ellie Kesselman Jun 20 '11 at 20:06
  • @Feral Oink: If you google "am thinking to" you get many pages which use "am thinking to" in exactly this way, a number of pages which say this is incorrect grammar, and at least one page which explains the difference in meaning between the constructions thinking to invest and thinking of investing. It's a reasonably common construction, at least in some dialects of English. I'm sure I've heard it, so I suspect it's common in some dialects of American English. Does anybody know which ones, if any? – Peter Shor Jun 20 '11 at 20:19
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    @Peter Shor: It's commonplace here in South East UK "Estuary English". I recognise it as somewhat informal and non-standard, but I don't fret too much about it being bad grammar. And I think anyone who wants to make out a case for that difference in meaning (as opposed to what it tells you of the speaker's verbal flexibility) is away with the fairies. – FumbleFingers Jun 21 '11 at 00:05
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    @Feral Oink: You must understand that not all matters linguistic are settled by saying "that is wrong and this is right". As @Peter Shor points out, within the context of some dialects, OP's first sentence is quite acceptable - and possibly even to be preferred. Language is what people say, not what grammarians think they should say even if no-one actually does. – FumbleFingers Jun 21 '11 at 00:10
  • I would think "thinking about investing" serves just as well. – ErikE Jun 21 '11 at 05:15
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    @FumbleFingers: I don't think Feral was necessarily trying to be overly prescriptivist (hopefully I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth!), but rather that "I am thinking to invest in stocks" really does sound horribly ungrammatical in many dialects. (I had no idea anybody would ever say that: before this thread, if I'd seen you writing it, I'd have immediately assumed you weren't a native speaker.) – grautur Jun 21 '11 at 05:58
  • In other words, before this thread, I'd have put it in the "I are hungry" bucket (something I can't imagine any native speaker saying), not in the "I ain't hungry" or "I must needs be gone" bucket. (I'm not sure I quite agree that the first sentence is a "fairly common structure" in places other than the Southeast UK =).) – grautur Jun 21 '11 at 06:01
  • @MT_Head: for me, at least, certain "investing into" constructions sound fine (e.g., "I'm thinking of investing all my money into this savings account"), though "I'm thinking of investing into stocks" does sound off. (Maybe it depends on whether "invest" is used intransitively or transitively?) – grautur Jun 21 '11 at 06:07
  • @grautur - I'm not going to tell you you're wrong to say it that way, but I will tell you that you're pretty much alone... – MT_Head Jun 21 '11 at 06:10
  • @MT_Head: Those are bigrams (i.e., "invest" immediately followed by "into"), though, so if my transitive theory is right, that's to be expected =). – grautur Jun 21 '11 at 06:13
  • @grautur - If a tree falls in the forest, and you can't Google for it, does it make a sound? – MT_Head Jun 21 '11 at 06:27
  • @grautur: I think you're right. Investing into certainly steers into acceptable linguistic territory for some (incl. me) when applied to, say countries or sections of stock markets. Maybe not a 'savings account', because that seems specific, where the more acceptable usages are more diversified. But the point is, the usage is possible for some speakers/writers, I think. – FumbleFingers Jun 22 '11 at 00:47
  • @gratur and @FumbleFingers Yes! I think that is much of why it sounded so "wrong" to me. Specifically, the bigram (investing into), which I had never heard of until now. Regarding usage, I am in central Arizona in the U.S.A. That is why the expression was unfamiliar to me. I haven't had the opportunity to enjoy the subtle cadences of English as spoken in the Southeast U.K. Seriously though, even "This needs be done" or "This needs washing" is somewhat common in New England, but would seem odd to many here. So thank you both, and @Peter Shor too. I am satisfied. And enlightened. – Ellie Kesselman Jun 22 '11 at 20:20
  • @Feral Oink: Outside the (somewhat contrived) context so deftly supplied by @marw's answer, I don't think anyone is seriously advancing the proposition that thinking investing into is a valid construct. We're mostly talking about whether thinking to is a valid alternative to thinking of, or thinking about. And the answer seems to be "Yes, in some dialects, but not in most". – FumbleFingers Jun 22 '11 at 22:02
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When you are considering a possibility or advantages of doing something, you use think of.

He was thinking of becoming a zoologist.
I am thinking of investing my money.
I am thinking of investing in stocks.

apaderno
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"I am thinking investing into stocks" needs a second part to make it grammatically valid. For example:

  • What's up, John? You seem absorbed.
  • I am thinking investing into stocks is a risky thing nowadays. I'll cancel the deal.

Which is contracted from "thinking that/[of] how investing...".

But, in general, there are better choices to express the same meaning.

marw
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I wouldn't use either one; I'd say "I'm considering investing in stocks". One does not "invest into" anything (in my experience). The first sounds at best somewhat stilted.

PSU
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  • The fact that you would use the word considering in the first place doesn't really have any bearing on OP's question, which is about correct use of the word thinking. And here's an NGram link showing that investing into (whole countries, and other large-scale sectors) has become very much more common in recent decades...http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=investing+into&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 – FumbleFingers Jun 22 '11 at 21:53
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Funny, I had thought it was

"I am thinking about investing in stocks."

But maybe that's too colloquial?

John
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  • So far as I'm aware, thinking of and thinking about are both perfectly standard English, neither being any more 'colloquial' than the other. – FumbleFingers Jun 22 '11 at 21:47