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Article Writing Tips: The Phrase
The hardest article writing tips to learn and apply are the ones that teach us to abandon bad writing and speech habits. This is especially true of a writer’s propensity to write in the same manner that they speak in. This is never a wise idea as any transcriptionist will tell you: most people speak terribly and constantly blurt all sorts of nonsensical crap. This means that if you already speak poorly your writing will probably seem amateurish at best. This includes the use of phrases like “Should of,” “Anyways,” and one of the most common idiotic phrases of all, “Try and.” Nearly everyone uses the words “try and” in everyday speech, but this is a perfect example of poor English. And when this phrase makes its way into the writing of even very good writers it can result in the loss of the most valuable readers: the intelligent ones!
In the first sentence of this article are the following terms: “learn and apply.” Let’s compare that to “try and write.” The word “and” is an operator that indicates there are two things being combined, or that one follows the other. So in the case of the first term, we know the usage of “learn and apply” is correct because there are two specific things going on: learning AND applying.
In the case of the second term, “try and write” doesn’t yield any real meaning once you examine it. We know that there is writing going on, but what is this “try and” part mean? What does this person intend to try in addition to writing? The phrase can be broken down into its two parts to clearly see why it’s ridiculous:
*Try
AND
*Write
Don’t forget, AND is the operator that combines the two words. The “try” part of this term is vague and makes no sense: what is being tried? The phrase really means that two things are happening: one is writing and the other is unknown.
There is never a time where you could use the phrase “try and” where it would be considered correct. Instead, you should always say “try to.” Compare the following sentences and you’ll easily see the difference:
“I will try and run 3 miles later.” Or “I will try to run 3 miles later.”
“Try and get this done quickly please.” Or “Try to get this done quickly please.”
So now that you know the difference, you shouldn’t use the phrase “try and” unless you’re running a tween blog that uses words like “coulda” and “ur.” But if you want to be taken seriously as a writer, you’ll TRY TO ensure that you never write as you speak. Chances are great that once you start writing correctly, you’ll probably start speaking correctly as well.