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Possible Duplicate:
Why is “to get” sometimes used where “to be” could be used?

I am working on a website and I'm having a little difficulty selecting an appropriate message on the signup page.

Consider the following sentences:

Sign up to Be Discovered.
Sign up to Get Discovered.

Which of these phrases is more grammatically correct? I assume "Get Discovered" is more appropriate however it still feels off. Is there a third option I am missing?

Community
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kz3
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  • It's a a question about the Get-Passive, all right. Another answer is Barrie's in http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44691/grammar-of-married-in-getting-married. But in any case there's a significant amount of confusion between Passives, Participles, and Predicate Adjectives. – John Lawler Feb 17 '12 at 16:21

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Sign up to be discovered is the correct answer

Joanne
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    It's best to give some rationale for your response rather than simply come out and state it. I think most people would agree that both are perfectly good English sentences. – Brett Reynolds Feb 17 '12 at 21:01
  • @BrettReynolds: I agree with your first sentence, but to me "Sign up to Get Discovered" doesn't sound right. Perhaps usage differs between British and North American English? –  Feb 18 '12 at 15:17
  • Nope, it's the same in the UK: http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/?c=bnc&q=14572845 – Brett Reynolds Feb 19 '12 at 01:38
  • @BrettReynolds: "to get discovered" was not included in the results returned via your link, and when I changed "to get [vvn*]" to "to get discovered", the search returned 0 results. I think this confirms that this is not a current usage in British English. –  Feb 21 '12 at 14:43
  • @MarkBannister: I was referring to the general usage of get + past participle, rather than the particular use of get discovered. As you say, that particular expression doesn't seem to appear in the BNC but does appear in the COCA, so in this particular instance might indeed be a British vs NA thing. – Brett Reynolds Feb 21 '12 at 15:09