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up vote 2 down vote favorite

I saw on the bottom of an email:

To change your email preferences or unsubscribe from certain messages, click here.

Is that correct or should it be:

To change your email preferences or to unsubscribe from certain messages, click here.

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"To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." – kiamlaluno Dec 16 '11 at 1:46
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You should use jQuery. – Mahnax Dec 16 '11 at 4:52

3 Answers

up vote 0 down vote

I guess it should be "to do this or to do that". This goes more with the flow and sounds proper.

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up vote 0 down vote

Disambiguation. Please repeat the to; after all saving two alphabets does not count for efficiency.

Let the user not be taxed with a grammatical ellipsis. (I had a mind to say 'Let not the user...'), but why not make it simpler.

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up vote 7 down vote

Either is grammatically correct: eliding the to would be called ellipsis, and it is normal in English. The second to is redundant when considering the previously supplied grammatical context. Consider the following ellipsis:

Original: To change your preferences or to change your subscription list, click here.

Ellipsis: To change your preferences or your subscription list, click here.

Here, the second to change is redundant, and can grammatically be removed. You could also omit the second your:

Ellipsis: To change your preferences or subscription list, click here.

While either will (almost always) be acceptable, ellipsis is generally preferred because of efficiency.

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Thanks! Is one preferred over the other? Is one more formal or used more often in different regions? or are they both always acceptable? – Adam Dec 16 '11 at 1:27
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Neither will be condemned (unless the world happens to be much worse than I'd noticed), but ellipsis is usually better, unless you are trying to be very clear. It's not a predominantly formal phenomenon, nor is it predominantly informal. Also, as far as I know, there isn't much consistent dialectical difference as to ellipsis. – Daniel δ Dec 16 '11 at 1:33
You can even cut one more word in most contexts. You can say, "To do this or that". – David Schwartz Dec 16 '11 at 3:25
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Ellipsis is really only frowned upon in cases where it could create ambiguity, IMHO. – Karl Knechtel Dec 16 '11 at 9:54
@Karl: 'is'or should be'? – TimLymington Jan 10 '12 at 13:59

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