alt Hacker NewsPrompted by reading an instance of "try and" instead of "try to" in an HN-linked Register article[1] this morning, I thought this might be of interest to both non-native and native English speakers in our community.
Try to ascertain why I'm on Team "Try To"! (If you feel like trying and! J)
Replies
In his comments on the use of symbols P and V in semaphores, Dijkstra gave the reason for choosing P as it having come from "probeer te verlagen", which he infamously explained that when translated into English means "try and decrease" [sic].
‘Try and’ is correct British English and the Register is a UK publication. If the author had written ‘to try make’ they would have gotten in trouble with their editor and ‘to try to make’ doesn’t flow as well, to my eyes at least.
I thought from the title that this was going to be about some new exception handling mechanism in a programming language I'm not familiar with. In fact, the article was even more interesting than that, as I've often wondered about this in the past but never quite got to looking it up. Thank you!