Does the following sentence from Adweek bother you:
It is tempting—as well as, in liberal circles, heretical—to try and separate Roger Ailes from his politics.
Some language pedants will be immediately drawn to try and and will insist that it should be try to. But should it be? Let’s take a look.
Try And’s History
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Online Etymology Dictionary both date try as in “to attempt, to test” to the 14th century. The OED’s first reference for try and dates to 1686:
They try and express their love to God by their thankfulness to him. —The history of monastical conventions and military institutions (1686)
Right away, we can see we’re not dealing with a new concept. Try and has been in common usage for over 300 years. This Google Ngram shows that although try to has been more common than try and, the difference was fairly consistent until the early 19th century.
After 1820, usage of try and remained stable, but that of try to shot way up. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (MWDEU), try and started to be criticized as ungrammatical at that time. Never mind that by then, the usage had been in circulation for over 100 years and similar constructions (e.g., go and) had been around since the 13th century. Clearly, people started believing it to be ungrammatical, yet try and continued to be used to some extent.
What the Usage Experts Say
By the early 20th century, usage experts were advising that try and was a legitimate, if casual or idiomatic, construction. In 1926, H. W. Fowler wrote in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage that try and “is an idiom that should be not discountenanced, but used when it comes natural.” In 1957, Bergen Evans and Cornelia Evans wrote in A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage that try and is “standard English.”
While R.W. Burchfield, in The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1996), is undecided about try and’s legitimacy, he notes many uses of it in literature. Finally, Bryan Garner (2009) puts try and at stage 4 of his Language Change Index: “The form becomes virtually universal but is opposed on cogent grounds by a few linguist stalwarts (die-hard snoots).”
What We Really Say
The experts can tell us to use one construction over another all they want. The question is whether we listen.
| Source | try and | try to |
| Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) | 2,341 | 38,650 |
| Time magazine | 243 | 8,549 |
| Google Books (1990s) | 70,321 | 1.3 million |
| Google Books (2000s) | 125,545 | 1.9 million |
| Google News | 35,100 | 55,000 |
| 436 million | 900 million |
All results from the above table are from written modern texts (spoken texts were filtered out of COCA), and all but the Google results are from edited texts. Clearly we are still using try and, but we continue to use try to more often. Surprisingly, the gap between the two is smallest within Google News results. Although newspapers tend to be written less formally to appeal to a mass audience, Google results contain links to many, many web pages that have not been written by professional writers, let alone edited. But the results seem to indicate that we use try to in our most formal writing, and try and is very common in less formal situations, which backs up what Garner and MWDEU tell us.
Try And’s Informality
Try and is neither a new construction nor an ungrammatical one. It’s been consistently used and accepted for centuries. However, it is typically used in casual writing, intimate writing, and speech rather than in formal writing. Before using try and, think about your text’s tone and style and your audience. If you’re writing something formal, such as an academic paper, stick with try to. However, if you’re writing something less formal, such as a magazine article, go ahead and use try and.
What other usage questions do you have? Send them to me!
Update: Thanks to reader KK for pointing out typos in this post. They’ve been corrected. Even editors need editors.
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In addition being less formal, it seems to me that “try and” has a slightly different meaning than “try to.” For example “Try and sing this song” to me sounds like “First try to sing this song, then actually do it.” This is an interesting post on the same issue. The second answer says the same thing about “try and” meaning “Try to do X and then actually do Y.”
That’s an interesting parsing of the phrase. I don’t hear that meaning, but I wonder how many other speakers do and whether there’s a dividing line between native speakers and ESL speakers. Thanks!
“Try and” strikes me as both idiomatic and wrong, if ambivalence is permissible. It’s an old mistake that doesn’t make grammatical sense, but it’s too common to be dismissed.
One question: Should we change it in edited copy? I would change to “try to.”
Try and fail.
Try to fail.
That’s the only distinction I can find between the two. When writing, though, I’ll always write ‘try to’…
For me, it will depend on the copy. If I’m editing copy that is casual, I’d leave try and. But if it’s meant to be formal copy, I’d change it to try to.
I don’t think I ever write informal copy.
At least I don’t try and.
This is very interesting. Since “try and” has such a long history in the English language, and a guiding principle of much prescriptive grammar is consistency with original meanings and structures, one could argue that “try and” should be viewed as just as correct as “try to.” Still, I personally find its usage a bit grating aesthetically. I’d probably still edit it out unless it were in a quote or used in copy done in a really informal voice.
Not sure how “try and do it” could mean anything but “try, and then do it.” So, maybe it’s not “ungrammatical,” but it does say something different from what’s intended. Chalk it up to idiom, sure, but why not say what you mean when there’s an equally familiar expression that does just that?
[...] Try to try out “try and”. [...]
[...] here is something from The Writing Resource blog on the use of ‘try and’; in this post, Erin Brenner gives a good historical and stylistic explanation, concluding that [...]
Very interesting. As a non-native English speaker I somehow gave – unaware until I actually read this article – my own connotation to “try to” and “try and”. Try to do sth. is a straight forward instruction. Just try to do this or try to do that, simply try it. Try and do sth. however sounds like there is some doubt, will you actually succeed? are you aware how difficult it is? has anybody done it before? I may be completely wrong though. Any comments more than welcome!
I’m a native American English speaker. I’ve always found the “try and” construct to be sloppy and grating. After reading this Web page, though, I’ve grudgingly decided to allow it in informal contexts when editing other people’s work, even if I will never, ever use it in my own writing. Ugh!
I have taught English in England to 11-18-year-olds since 1969. This has cropped up from time to time. There is no arguing with established usage: “try and” is idiomatic and therefore correct. Compare the idiom “wait and see” – no native speaker of English would say “wait to see” instead, and the “and” in the idiomatic form does not imply necessary success.
“Will Sally be at the party?”
“We’ll have to wait and see. Will you?”
“Just try and stop me.”
Thanks for your comments, Dick!