She preferred ending her life to going on living in that horrible limbo.

Question

HiDoes this sentence sound OK to you? Any suggestions are welcome.She preferred to end her life than go on living in that horrible limbo.or She preferred ending her life to going on living in that horrible limbo.Thanks,Tom

Earlybird · Accepted Answer

1-The first sentence is to be rectified as: She prefered to end her life rather than going on.............

2-But the second sentence is true because of the".....prefer+...ing......to+....ing"

Yankee · Answer

Hi Tom

These are my suggestions:

She preferred to end her life rather than (to) go on living in that horrible limbo.
(The word 'to' is optional.)

I'm not terribly fond of the abundance of -ing endings in the second sentence, though there's nothing grammatically wrong with it. You could simply omit 'going on':

She preferred ending her life to (going on) living in that horrible limbo.

You could also omit 'going on' and add something such as 'another day':
- ... to living another day...

By the way, in the past tense spelling, the final R in the verb 'prefer' needs to be doubled -- just as you did.

Minhhai2209 · Answer

I believe we can also say "She preferred to end her life rather than living in that horrible limbo."

Anonymous · Answer

Hi there!
Never in my life have I heard (or read, for that matter) that after RATHER THAN 'to' can be used. I can't find it in any grammar book either. Can you give me clues as to where to read about it? Or would you simply elaborate on that?
Cheers,
Maska

Yankee · Answer

Hi Maska,

If you do a search in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) for the phrase 'rather than to', you will get lots of examples of usage. The search results are in all registers.

I only found one example of 'rather than to' in the BNC, however a Google search of British sites (i.e. sites ending with .uk rather than .com) turned up plenty of examples of the use of that phrase:

http://www.google.com/#q=%22rather+than+to%22+site:.uk&hl=en&prmd=iv&ei=oMitTI6EKYWglAeXidn0BA&start=10&sa=N&fp=9f2370386c77b788

When using the phrase 'rather than', you are presenting a sort of comparison, and thus it makes sense to have the same sort of structure or type of word on either side of the phrase so that you are comparing apples with apples:

- I wear gray rather than black to funerals.

- I like to read rather than (to) watch TV before I go to sleep.

Anonymous · Answer

Hi,
I should've been more specific: what I meant was that I've never (until today) come across 'rather than to' with 2 activities. It's just always been I'd prefer to stay in rather than go outbut I guess it's good to know there's another option

Cheers!
Maska

She preferred ending her life to going on living in that horrible limbo.

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1-The first sentence is to be rectified as: She prefered to end her life rather than going on.............

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