June 12, 1996

try and

"Try and stop me" or any other "Try and" configuration. This favorite taunt of the about-to-be-stopped archvillain seems to have gotten comically out of whack. I guess people mean "Just try to stop me" but I hear a lot of people using "and" instead of "to". There must be similar misusages of "and" (to say nothing of people meaning to write "of" when they mean "have"--"should of done that", etc), but I can't think of any right now.

Actually, this so-called mistake is found earlier than the "proper" construction with try to. Not that that makes it right, but in this case there's a huge amount of evidence for try and: authors who have used it include Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, Henry Adams, Melville, Twain, Fitzgerald, and many others. The evidence shows that it's often colloquial--it's found in letters or representations of speech more often than in formal writing--but is still widespread at all levels of usage.

The fact is, the infinitive in English (such as the "stop" in your example "Try and stop me") does not necessarily require "to," and "and" can often be used for emphasis--granted, typically in colloquial use. Some examples of verbs taking infinitives with "and" are be sure ("Be sure and tell me when you're leaving") and go or come ("What's he want to go and do that for?").

Try is different--it really does require a following verb, while "go" and "come" can often be considered to be used independently of the next verb (that is, "Come and get it!" could mean "Come to get it," but "come here, and then get it" is a valid interpretation). For this reason, you can use try to when appropriate, but try and is very common and there's no reason to avoid it when it feels right.