To V VS in order to V

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Hi, Please help me."Finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20   economies have agreed to avoid currency devaluations in order to boost   exports."Does this sentence make sense? In my opinion, the more currency is devaluated, the more exports are boosted. So I think "in order" should be dropped so that "to boost exports" can modify "currency devaluations."

Avangi · Accepted Answer

tashiro"Finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 economies have agreed to avoid currency devaluations in order to boost exports."

In my opinion, the presence of "in order" in this particular case does not affect the ambiguity of the sentence.
With or without it, a comma after "devaluations" would assure the reading you consider incorrect.
Without the comma, the sentence is ambiguous, with or without "in order."

While I agree with your economic principle, I'm wondering how all 20 of these economies could hope to be net exporters. Don't they trade with each other?
I guess that's the point.

The question is, how would we reword the sentence to assure the meaning we both consider to be the intended one.
In other words, the reason they have agreed to avoid currency devaluations is not for the express purpose of boosting exports (which would be absurd), but to advance some other strategy, which is not included in your excerpt.

I wish Clive were here. He's a master at parsing impossible sentences.

My wife and I have decided not to go to the Little League game in order to support our son. (reason unknown)

If we place a comma after "game," this means our staying home will encourage him to play better.

To V VS in order to V

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