What is the difference between try to do and try and do?
To me (non-native speaker), asking someone try and do this seems a bit rude. It's like saying you can try all you want but this must be done: try and fail is not an option. However, asking someone try to do this means I am asking you to try: success is bonus, failure is OK.
"Try and" has largely been relegated to colloquial use, and "try to" is generally considered the correct form. They are basically synonymous. "Try and" is not really more rude, in my opinion. According to alt.usage.english, "try and" is probably older than "try to," and, when used, implies success or failure of whatever action is being attempted.
As far as speech goes though, they're the same thing. If you're writing, "try and" is generally discouraged.
Try and is a paraphrase of try to, typically used in informal promises and instructions, as in: I’ll try and keep in touch with her [and] Try and come soon. It expresses a supportive attitude, as Fowler (1926) noticed, and has a particular interpersonal role to play, hence its relatively high frequency in conversation.
From the article in ‘The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’
"Try and...", while accepted in everyday usage, always sounds wrong to me, as if the speaker is commanding you to do two things: try something unspecified, and then do this other thing.
"Try and do" is the form of "try to do" in my native dialect (centered in Pittsburgh, maybe), and probably wouldn't sound strange to any American or Canadian. A related construction is "needs done" instead of "needs to be done", which is more rare outside that dialect.
I believe "try and do" is more of an oral expression, but has the same meaning as "try to do".
In writing, I would always use "try to do".
When in doubt, remember the words of the great orator, Bart Simpson:
"I can't promise I'll try, but I'll try to try."
On my suggestion, now enshrined in the Guardian style guide:
try to
never "try and". As Bart Simpson put it: "I can't promise I'll try, but I'll try to try"
There is no difference. "Try to" is the "classic" version -- "try and" has been increasing in usage recently (and is quite the pet peeve of mine), but I've never known an English speaker to see a difference in meaning between the two.
This is really strange, in Norwegian it's a lot of confusion between homphones "og" (meaning and) and "å" (equivalent to the word to) that are pronounced the same (the g is silent, and o is sometimes the same sound as å, which is approximately the same sound as the vowel in "wall"). This is not surprising, but I've noticed the same confusion occur in related languages like English where it's not homophones.
Perhaps it's something about the grammar of the Germanic languages that causes this difference to be hard to understand?
(There could be a slight intentional difference in meaning between "try to" and "try and" but usually it seems like a mistake)
The use of "try and" seems to me to be an effort to build optimism into the language. If one actually is unsure of success one would appropriately say, "I will try to succeed." However, If there is no doubt that success will occur what need is there to insert "try and" into the phrase when then one could simply say, "I will succeed."
"Try and do" is regarded as a colloquial and ungrammatical version of "try to do", but is really grammatical if you accept that it expresses a slightly different meaning technically. "Try and do" seems to imply that you will try, but that you WILL do something, while "try to do" doesn't seem to express any certainty about the outcome of your trying. That said, people generally use "try and do" to mean "try to do", and you can save it from being labeled ungrammatical by calling it idiomatic.
On way to see that try and instead of try to is wrong is to say it in the past tense. Yesterday, I tried to do something vs yesterday, I tried and do something. Future tense, I will try to do something tomorrow vs I will try and do something tomorrow.
When used correctly, the conjunction "and" in "try and" means there are two distinct thoughts. If there is a continuous thought, always use "try to".
For example, in football a runner would try to score. He may or may not succeed. If you say "try and score" you are separating the try from the score. He is going to try and he is going to score. Since scoring is directly connected to what he is trying to do, the only correct way to say it or write it is "try to". They do not have the same meaning though some people use them as having the same meaning. You can prove this by using other tenses of try.
On that play the runner tried and score.
Obviously that does not work. It should be written as tried to.
The runner tried to score on that play.
or
The runner was trying to score.
Just because many people get it wrong does not make it right. Consider these two sentences:
The inventor will try to succeed in making his project work.
or
The inventor will try and succeed in making his project work.
They both could be correctly used but one means he may succeed while the other means he will try and he will succeed.
It's quite straightforward really and nothing to do with the verb 'try'! In the examples given the imperative form of the verb 'to try' is always followed by a second verb, which is non-finite in form; e.g. try to come if you can, try to be early as it gets filled up quickly, etc. Since the finite form of the verb is always to be, to have, to come etc. then the correct word to use must be 'to' rather than 'and'.
However, when we speak we usually don't observe such niceties and so 'try and' is commonly heard. However, when we write we should try to use the correct grammatical construction!
