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Usage of to: What we are going to do now is (to) change gears.



 
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Usage of to: What we are going to do now is (to) change gears. #1 (permalink) Fri May 16, 2008 0:03 am   Usage of to: What we are going to do now is (to) change gears.
 

Hello

Which one is grammatically correct?

What we are going to do now is change gears
What we are going to do now is to change gears

is "to" necesssary in the above sentence? What is the reason for or against?
Ched133
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Usage of to: What we are going to do now is (to) change gears. #2 (permalink) Fri May 16, 2008 0:09 am   Usage of to: What we are going to do now is (to) change gears.
 

Hello Ched,

Both sound fine to me; the "to" is optional.

I would regard the two forms as simply two different kinds of ellipsis:

1. What we are going to do now is [we are going to] change gears
2. What we are going to do now is [we are going] to change gears

(Other members may have other explanations, though.)

All the best,

MrP

__

Edit to correct "are" to "as"
MrPedantic
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Usage of to: What we are going to do now is (to) change gears. #3 (permalink) Fri May 16, 2008 10:38 am   Usage of to: What we are going to do now is (to) change gears.
 

We (my students and I :) ) have no explanation, just the rule in our Grammar books that in certain expressions with do (All I did was...) we can omit to.
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