Re: "To run is good exercise"?!

martinphipps2@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> Geoff wrote:
> > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > martinphipps2@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > >
> > >>It seems that non-native speakers of English in Taiwan do not realize
> > >>that "To run is good exercise" is not a good English sentence. A
> > >>collegue today even said it was grammatically correct. I don't think
> > >>it is: I would never start a sentence with an infinitive. The one
> > >>counterexample I can think of would be the song lyric "To know him is
> > >>to love him" except here the sentence is in the form verb phrase = verb
> > >>phrase and not the awkward verb phrase = noun phrase as in the previous
> > >>example.
> > >
> > >
> > > To provide a counterexample, I have composed this sentence.
> >
> > To be honest, I composed a different one.
>
> To make things absolutely clear (for the sake of people like Peter who
> would appear to be reading-impaired), I would say that these sentences,
> including this one, are awkward and unwieldy.

Then you simply don't know what you're talking about.

Can you provide any examples of advice from usage guides -- from Fowler
to Strunk and White to Bergen & Cornelia Evans to (heaven help us)
William Safire to Patricia T. O'Conner to Robert Burchfield and on and
on -- that espouse your point of view?

Moreover, the three example sentences (mine, Geoff's, and yours) do not
exemplify what you originally complained about, viz., infinitive as
subject.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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