Difference between bother doing and bother to do

Hello Kalamajka

Welcome to this Forum.

The choice between "doing" and "to do" is really messy. Some verbs take only "doing" and some only "to do" and still some verbs can take both. Every English learner should be annoyed with this problem. But there seems no way other than learning them one by one.

In the case "bother", you can say both "bother doing" and "bother to d

Hi Kalamajka,

Welcome to the Forum.

There is a big difference in meaning with some verbs. eg

I stopped talking to Tom. The talking was 'before' the stopping.

I stopped to talk to Tom. First I stopped, then I talked.

I'm not sure if this is what you are thinking abou

Hi, and thank you for your kind reply. I didn't distinguish between the usage of bother/cease to do/doing either until I bumped into some excersises on the internet: http://www.nonstopenglish.com/exercise.asp?exid=778 (see questions 11, 12, 13 and 16, 17), where clearly, there must be some sort of

Hi,

Well, I don't see any real difference in these examples. You could use either form, subject to minor and personal style preferences. In 13, it's not nice to have two '-ing' forms together.

Clive

My tries were as below but I too feel both forms may be OK.

11. Don't bother to do the dishes. [negation]
[google check] don't bother to do 16,600 / don't bother doing 24,900
12. He hasn't even bothered to write. [negation]
[google check] hasn't bothered to write 528 / hasn't bothered writing 68
13. She walked out of the room without bothering to say goodbye.[style]

Thank you! The Google check is a really good idea. It seems, though, that there is an obvious preference in the examples mentioned above, and it seems you need to be a native speaker to know when to use the -ing form and when to use the infinitive.

You are right. What we ESLs can do to learn that sort of thing is nothing but following native speakers. What's a problem to us is native speakers themselves don't know why they are speaking the way they are doing. In many cases, the reason they could give us is no more than "we are speaking so".

paco

Hi i think the solution is quite clear to you imagine a situation where you have been working hard to do something you can say " i bothered to get where i am today" in the sense of i worked hard for it, in this case you are talking one single event in your life. Whereas if you say "i dont bother making new friends any more" you talking about an habit of yours.

Hello Anon

Thank you for the nice tip. I was taught as a general rule that we could choose -ing forms for habitual actions and infinitives for particular (future) events. But I have a feeling that the rule sometimes works but not always. So …

paco

Paco2004My tries were as below but I too feel both forms may be OK.

11. Don't bother to do the dishes. [negation]
[google check] don't bother to do 16,600 / don't bother doing 24,900
12. He hasn't even bothered to write. [negation]
[google check] hasn't bothered to write 528 / hasn't bothered writing 68
13. She walked out of the room without bot