Now that we've learned the basics of gerunds and infinitives, let's take a closer look at some of the verbs that can be used with infinitives and how they are used.
Begin, Start, Continue
The verbs begin, start, and continue are special verbs that come before infinitives and gerunds. In sentences that you use them in, the gerund form and the infinitive form mean the exact same thing. You can choose whether you want to use the infinitive form or the gerund form of the sentence.
| Infinitive form | Gerund form | |
| She started to cry. | or | She started crying. |
Both of these sentences mean the same thing because they both used the verb start.
| Infinitive form | Gerund form | |
| He started to sing. | or | He started singing. |
| It continued to rain. | It continued raining. | |
| They began to run. | They began running. |
Like, Love, Hate, Prefer
After the words like, love, hate, and prefer, the infinitive and the gerund forms mean pretty much the same thing. However, sometimes it is more common to use an infinitive to talk about an activity that happens at a specific time, and a gerund to talk about an activity in general. This might seem a bit confusing at first, so let's take a look a look at a gerund and infinitive sentence with "like" to see how they are different.
Gerund Sentence with "like"
I like driving. (This sentence tells you that the speaker likes to drive, but it does not tell you what specific time the speaker likes to do this activity. Does the speaker like driving at night? In June? We don't know any of these things.)
Infinitive Sentence with "like"
I like to drive late in the afternoon. (This sentence tells you that the speaker likes to drive at a specific time -- late in the afternoon).
Exercise
Please open the exercise to continue.