have to

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Taka

#213778 Sun, 09 Apr 06 01:30 PM

No matter what business you take up, if you want to succeed, you must do what have to be done a little better than anyone around you.

Shouldn't it be 'has to' instead of 'have to' here? Is it still grammatically correct to use 'have to' in this case?

Taka

Joined on Tue, Sep 7 2004

Japan

Senior Member (2,266)

nona the brit

#213781 Sun, 09 Apr 06 01:43 PM

You are correct. It should read 'has to'

nona the brit

Joined on Wed, Sep 22 2004

England

Veteran Member (11,355)

The name says it all.

MrPedantic

#213802 Sun, 09 Apr 06 03:42 PM

Yes, I'd choose "has to" too.

"Have to" suggests three possibilities:

1. The speaker mistakenly imagines that it's necessary (or grammatical) to use a present subjunctive.

2. There are many different things "to be done"; so the speaker mistakenly imagines that it's necessary to use a plural verb.

3. A typo.

MrP

MrPedantic

Joined on Wed, Oct 13 2004

Veteran Member (12,053)

...opella forensis / adducit febris...

Plurals, Subjunctives, Verbs

Wwwdotcom

#213845 Sun, 09 Apr 06 06:09 PM

This looks like a simple slip up. You can say, "do what you have to do". Maybe they were thinking, "you must do what YOU have to do" but then changed their wording to "be done" and simply forgot to change the wording. As in the beginning we have "No matter what business you TAKE UP", so it sounds better to keep focus on the individual as opposed to what "has to be done" in general.

Wwwdotcom

Joined on Fri, Sep 30 2005

Kyoto, but originally from Detroit

Full Member (336)

pieanne

#213846 Sun, 09 Apr 06 06:11 PM

"What has to be done" too...

pieanne

Joined on Thu, Jan 20 2005

South of France ...But I'm Belgian!

Veteran Member (7,512)

I'm glad to help, but I'm not a native! And please excuse my typos...

MrPedantic

#213890 Sun, 09 Apr 06 11:00 PM

"...what have to be done..." clocks up a surprising 936 googles, e.g.

1. To Do Lists are great reminders of what have to be done.

There seems to be a "needs a plural" misconception out there (cf. the people who say "as follow" before a list of several items).

MrP

MrPedantic

Plurals

Taka

#213931 Mon, 10 Apr 06 03:49 AM

MrPedantic wrote:
"...what have to be done..." clocks up a surprising 936 googles, e.g.

MrP, I don't think we can accept the results at face value because some might have been written by 'sloppy' people.

Taka

Believer

#214080 Mon, 10 Apr 06 03:03 PM

If I were the person doing the writing as I see fit, then I would write like this:

No matter which/what business you take up, you must do what needs to be done a little better than anyone around you.

Personally, your sentence is as good as anyone around me, I think.

Believer

Joined on Mon, Jan 2 2006

Contributing Member (1,969)

MrPedantic

#214195 Tue, 11 Apr 06 01:17 AM

Taka wrote:
MrPedantic wrote:

"...what have to be done..." clocks up a surprising 936 googles, e.g.

MrP, I don't think we can accept the results at face value because some might have been written by 'sloppy' people.

Hello Taka

I'm surprised there are so many; but it's a tiny number, when set against the 754,000 googles for "what has to be done".

I expect those 936 are a mixture of sloppiness, bad editing, and misconceptions.

MrP

MrPedantic

Numbers