Try to understand / Try and understand...

I love when I get asked a question that I don’t immediately know the answer to. I enjoy looking into various parts of this fascinating, complicated language of ours! Two weeks ago, ESL Library’s VP of Publishing, Tara Benwell, asked me to explain the difference between “try to” and “try and” in a blog post. I told her I’d try to do it! Or is that try and do it…

Online:

First, I turned to my new favorite resource, googlefight.com. Googlefight looks at all the results on Google and gives you stats on which is mentioned more often. I typed in try to and try and, watched the stick men duke it out, and I got some interesting results. The results were pretty even: try and, with 3,190,000,000 results, only slightly beat try to, with 3,180,000,000 results. I was surprised! I thought that try to would be the more ‘“correct” grammar. This required further investigation!

Winner = try and

Next, I used Google Books Ngram Viewer to see how often try to and try and have appeared in books. The search parameters were from 1800 and 2008 from the corpus of English. The image below clearly shows that try to appears more often than try and in print form.

Winner = try to

Another search I did that might appeal to students was to enter the following into a Google search: 1) “try to” song, and 2) “try and” song. Tell students to look for song titles with those phrases followed by a verb. Several songs appeared on the first results page for try to, whereas only one song appeared for try and (“Try and Love Again” by the Eagles, in case you were wondering).

Winner = try to

Reference Books:

Although the dictionaries I checked only had entries for try in general, some of them gave examples using try to and try and. The Oxford Dictionary Online gave examples of both:

• He tried to regain his breath.
• I started to try and untangle the mystery.

Winner = tie

The Chicago Manual of Style, a very reputable style guide, had nothing to say specifically about the two phrases. But a quick online search of their website showed that they use try to a few times in their writing. (E.g., section 8.118: Writers and editors should try to follow the standards established within those fields.) Try and did not appear anywhere in the manual.

Winner = try to

The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style defined try and as “...a casualism for try to.” But the best source of information on these two phrases, by far, was Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. According to MW, the use of and in place of to in infinitive verbs has been occurring in English since the 16th century, with try and, specifically, appearing in the 17th century. Furthermore, there is no difference in meaning, although it remains a contentious issue for grammarians.

Winner = tie

Conclusion:

What do these results tell us? Overall, try to is the safest choice. In my opinion, try to seems to be the more formal, “correct grammar” choice. It’s favored use in books points to that. However, we can’t overlook common usage, especially since a lot of publishing happens online nowadays. It seems that, these days, try to and try and are equally acceptable. For casual speaking and writing, you can basically choose which one you want to use.

What should we tell our students? I’d tell my students that there are two forms with the same meaning, and in casual writing and speaking, they can use either try to or try and. But in more formal academic or business writing, it might be best to stick with try to.

Overall winner = try to (but only slightly)

Note: It’s interesting that you can’t use try and when you change the tense of try. I tried to explain it is correct, but I tried and explain(ed) it is incorrect. That could be another reason to suggest that students stick with try to.

Try, try again!