It is no use trying to persuade him.

It is no use trying to persuade him.

It is no use to try to persuade him.

I presume the second sounds wrong, but I can't explain the reason. Could you dig up a reason for my pupils? Thanks.

Cool Breeze wrote:

The gerund used to be preferable in your examples but things have changed and these days the infinitive is also very common. Few would consider it wrong. I wouldn't.

Hi CB,
I got interested, and look what I did:

1. My dictionary only mentions "it's no use doing something".
2. I searched with Google, and if I search for "it's no use to try", the first result is a link to a page where an ESL learner ask if "it's no use to try" is ok, and they were told it's not idiomatic and had to say "it's no use trying".
3. If you search with Google, "it's no use to try" gives very few results, I can only reach the fifteenth page (don't look at the fake results on the first page, they are absolutely meaningless)
4. I searched for "it's no use" on myspace.com, and all the results are followed by a gerund, apart from a few, which were written by a Portuguese guy. Only one were apparently written by a native speaker.

That leads me to think that "It's no use to do something" is probably not idiomatic for most native speakers and therefore it's better to avoid it.
What do you think?

Kooyeen wrote:

That leads me to think that "It's no use to do something" is probably not idiomatic for most native speakers and therefore it's better to avoid it. What do you think?

Hi Kooyeen

You are active as usual. That's very good! I did google for the infinitive as the subject of a clause and probably something else as well  -  I can't remember what, but the was in the early days of my membership here on these forums when some native speakers told me that some structures that had been accepted usage in English for centuries were no good. I knew full well that they were not common in everyday spoken English but that to me wasn't enough to discard them completely as incorrect. So I had to present some statistical facts to prove that I wasn't the only one using them.

These days I seldom get that response from native speakers and consequently I don't google either. I stand by what I wrote.

Cheers
CB

PS. I hope they'll clear up the mess in Naples before summer. If they don't, rats will have a heyday.

Angliholic wrote:

It is no use trying to persuade him. It is no use to try to persuade him. To make sure, the second sample in the first post of this thread is always regarded as wrong here. What do you think (native speakers in particular)?

Hi Angliholic, yes, I would say it's not idiomatic and you need to say "it's not use doing something", as said in my previous post. That's because of some research I have done, but that's just what I think and therefore I can't be 100% sure. CB doesn't agree, so I really don't know what to say now. CB, ok, I stand by what I wrote too. So, Angli-H, I guess you need some natives now if you want to be really sure... let's see if someone shows up.

PS: CB, yes... Anyway, I am not in Naples.