Is “There are many options to customize your preference” grammatically correct?

Question

There are many options to customize your preference.

Is there such a pattern in English?

Please avoid obtaining a wrong impression from the above sentence used actually to emphasize a pattern as follows.

• It is the tool to convert PDF to EPS.
• She is my secretary to prepare your document.
• I am a TeX expert to typeset your document.

I was inspired by the following pattern.

• I am glad to help you.
• I am sad to hear this news.

[Edit: This question was originally posed concerning a quite different sentence. The OP has edited it to make it clearer (including the title), but many of the answers below no longer appear relevant].

Answer 1

No; this is incorrect in English.

First of all, I believe you mean "technician", unless you are referring to a proper noun, i.e. a registered trademark of a company that they use as a label for a position. "TeXnician" is both capitalized as a proper noun and has a capital letter in the middle, which unless it is a use of "geek-capitalization" for a proper noun is also incorrect. If you come from a culture that uses a Greek-derived alphabet, I think you meant X as the Greek letter "chi", which is the correct sound but should be "ch" in this word.

Moving on: the sentence has improper verb tense. In English, the infinitive form "to typeset" should usually only be used after a conjugated verb, and in a few other exceptional cases. Because there is no other conjugated verb between the subject and the infitive, it's wrong. So, you could make the sentence correct by either conjugating the verb in the proper tense, or by adding a properly conjugated verb.

Also, the first-person verb "I am" is commonly used only for simple identification. "I am a technician". Adding the specification behind, "to typeset your document", implies that the speaker is not the only one called. It also sounds like the speaker is referring to himself as an object; such combinations of specific and non-specific identifications are normally made in the second or third person:

This is a tool used to typeset your document.

So, it sounds better if the speaker specifies himself in both clauses; either as "the technician", or "one of the technicians", because the additional phrase "to typeset your document" implies individual specification, calling for use of "the" instead of "a/an".

So, here are some examples of properly-structured sentences that should convey the same meaning.

I am the technician called to typeset your document. (adding a conjugated verb before "to typeset")

I am the technician that will typeset your document. (conjugating "to typeset" in the future perfect)

I am one of the technicians that are typesetting your document. (identifying as one of a group, and present perfect conjugation)

I am a technician. I was called to typeset your document. (removing specification by splitting the statement into an identification and a specification)

EDIT: Taking your "inspiration" into account, I would say that as a rule, active verb conjugation allows the use of the infinitive, and using "to be" to describe something as an adjective, allow use of the infinitive. Identification as a noun does not allow the infinitive to follow.

So, the following are correct:

I am glad to meet you. ("I am glad" is a description, not an identification; you yourself are not the concept of "glad")

I need someone to help me. ("I need someone" is a non-identifying statement, using active voice, so the object "someone to help me" is fine)

... but, "I am someone to help you" is an identification, and thus the object "someone to help you" sounds wrong; it requires conjugation to the proper tense.

Answer 2

Apparently the references to TeX are irrelevant to OP's question, but there's a link if (like me) you didn't know what it was, and you're curious.

I would say all OP's example sentences are slightly 'casual speech', but the usage is not at all uncommon. Neither is it inherently ungrammatical. For example, the man at your front door might say

I am the gasman to service your boiler

Strictly speaking, he means I am the gasman who has come to service your boiler. In practice the most common form is probably I am the gasman come to service your boiler, but there's nothing seriously wrong with dropping two or three words that serve no useful purpose in the sentence. No-one objects to...

Here comes the chopper to chop off your head

...in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons

Answer 3

I've never heard it but "TeXnician" is possible, you also see "TeXpert" ( a pun on TeX and Expert)

It would probably be slightly better as "I am a TeXnician, here/ sent to typeset your document"

Answer 4

The simple answer to your question is "No." There isn't a general pattern of the form

[pronoun] [to be] the [noun] to [complement]

Some nouns can take complements, some can't. Some take the to-infinitive as a complement, some take other forms, sometimes several with differing meanings. I don't have a simple rule for when complements are possible, but I would hazard a guess that it's related to how specific the original noun is. To go through your examples:

There are many options to customize your preference.

This is plausible, though we would usually put "preference" in the plural. I think I would normally use a slightly different form: "There are many options for customizing your preferences."

It is the tool to convert PDF to EPS.

Fine. Again, you could say "for converting" instead of "to convert", but that's much more a matter of taste for this one.

She is my secretary to prepare your document.

This doesn't work as idiomatic English; "secretary" doesn't take a complement. To get the sense you are after, you would need to rephrase it as "She is my secretary, and she will prepare your document," or something similar depending on the context.

I am a TeX expert to typeset your document.

Again this doesn't work, and many of the same rephrasings can be used to fix it.

Answer 5

The main sentence you are asking about ("There are many options to customize your preference.") is grammatical. It sounds a little silly because you have three words that are near synonyms of one another in the same sentence (it sounds a bit like one of those marketing sentences that doesn't actually say anything: what else would an "option" normally do if not "customise a preference"...). But it is grammatical.

However:

• (a) the third and fourth sentences you mention are not grammatical;
• (b) the second of your lists exhibits a different grammatical structure to your first list; I would avoid being "inspired" by one to create the other...