167. Don't use and for to. Don't say, Try and go if you can. Say instead, Try to go if you can.
Correct the following sentences:
- We ought to bravely fight for our rights.
- I will do all my employer tells me to.
- We shall try and get our lessons.
- I ought to at least help my comrades but I am afraid to.
Exercise 5
Study carefully the infinitives in the following quotation. Notice which are active and which are passive infinitives.
The twenty thousand men prematurely slain on a field of battle, mean, to the women of their race, twenty thousand human creatures to be borne within them for months, to be given birth to in anguish, to be fed from their breasts and to be reared with toil, if the members of the tribe and the strength of the nation are to be maintained. In nations continually at war, incessant and unbroken child-bearing is by war imposed on all women if the state is to survive; and whenever war occurs, if numbers are to be maintained, there must be an increased child-bearing and rearing. This throws upon woman, as woman, a war tax, compared with which all that the male expends in military preparations is comparatively light.
It is especially in the domain of war that we, the bearers of men's bodies, who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamor and ardor of battle, but singly, and alone, with a three-in-the-morning courage, shed our blood and face death that the battle-field might have its food, a food more precious to us than our heart's blood; it is we, especially, who, in the domain of war, have our word to say, a word no man can say for us. It is our intention to enter into the domain of war and to labor there till in the course of generations we have extinguished it.—Olive Schreiner.
Exercise 6
Mark the participles and infinitives.
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,