Is it correct to say:
The night she passed away, I sat in front of the TV too long.
Or must I say
The night she passed away, I sat in front of the TV for too long.
-
Like the for that marks the subject of an infinitive clause (For him to leave now would be a mistake), this for is only necessary when beginning a sentence. For too long we have accepted this, but not *Too long we have accepted this.– John LawlerMar 31, 2014 at 21:39
-
2They're both acceptable reductions of 'for too long a time'; the shorter one is probably more idiomatic (popular).– Edwin AshworthMar 31, 2014 at 21:39
-
@JohnLawler Actually, I think Too long have we accepted this would be ok - don't you?– Alicja ZMar 31, 2014 at 23:24
-
Yes, but that requires subject-verb inversion. Different structure, different rule.– John LawlerMar 31, 2014 at 23:50
-
@JohnLawler, it’s 2:30 AM here, so perhaps my brain is not functioning quite properly … but when can the for that marks the subject of an infinitive clause be dropped when not sentence-initial? “It would be a mistake for him to leave now” still requires it, as do all other constructions I can think of … (Also, “Too long we have accepted this” sounds just as fine to me as “For too long we have accepted this”—both being significantly inferior and less natural than the inverted form.)– Janus Bahs JacquetApr 1, 2014 at 0:33
|
Show 1 more comment
1 Answer
Both versions are correct, though the shorter one ('too long') might seem a bit more informal in some contexts.
In fact the Corpus of Contemporary American English contains hundreds of sentences that don't have a 'for' before the 'too long' (but in which you could add the 'for' if you wanted to), including:
The rest of the artifacts have been moldering in the ground too long for me to say what they are or to get anything off them.
...his eyes were so blue that they left her feeling as though she'd stared too long up into the sky.
The bullet is for himself, if the bear mauling drags on too long.
