How do you decide whether to use the infinitive or -ing version of a verb?
Example:
Three months had passed since she started to avoid me.
Three months had passed since she started avoiding me.
Right now, what I do is to search for the phrase with the most results in Google Books (e.g. she started to avoid me vs she started avoiding me).
Still, I wonder: is there any way to decide whether to use the former or the latter?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/17131. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 answers
Note: I am not a native speaker and know English mainly through reading the language. My feel for language is therefore more influenced by written than by spoken English, a confoundation that might confuse some of the native speakers here, or a lack which might lead to Germanisms influencing me. You be the judge :-)
To me the proper use is reflected in the following example:
Three months have passed since she has started to avoid me, and she has been avoiding me ever since.
I would say that you use the past or present continuous for events that are ongoing in the present or had been ongoing until a specified end point or for a specified duration, and the infinitive for activities that you plan, think, want, start to do, that is that lie in the future of the thinking, starting and so on, but have not yet begun.
Viz.:
Three months have passed since she had started to avoid me -- and given up and returned into my arms after that first attempt.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17137. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I think it's subjective. To my ear, to avoid is a series of individual events, while avoiding implies something continuous and ongoing.
"She started to avoid me" sounds like "I called her and she didn't return my call. The next day I texted her but she didn't text back. Two days later I sent her an email which she never opened."
"She started avoiding me" sounds like "I walked in the room and she immediately left, and when I followed her she left the building."
That's just my opinion; others may hear them as interchangeable. They're both right, and I think the nuance of difference is so subtle that you could use either purely depending on which one you liked the sound of.
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