1 Topic by Dirk B. (edited by Dirk B. 2018-12-20 23:10:13)

Topic: wear vs. wearing

Can someone please tell me if my use of wearing is correct? One of my reviewers says it should be wear, and he's probably right, although I find it odd to write it that way.

Calabrese was the only priest at Orfanotrofio di San Nicola who never stooped to wearing the simple uniform of the other priests: black shirt, black pants, and a tabbed collar.

Quote Post 1

Re: wear vs. wearing

Dirk B. wrote:

Can someone please tell me if my use of wearing is correct? One of my reviewers says it should be wear, and he's probably right, although I find it odd to write it that way.

Calabrese was the only priest at Orfanotrofio di San Nicola who never stooped to wearing the simple uniform of the other priests: black shirt, black pants, and a tabbed collar.

"to wear' is 100% grammatically unambiguous and 100% understandable; "stooped to wearing" depends on the idiomatic use of verb "to stoop" with subsequent "to" and altering a verb "to wear" into a gerund, "wearing."  If the author wants a looser, vernacular narrative he will use a grammatically looser structure  like this latter construction {*} and blends the voice of omniscient narration with POV dialogue for no beneficial effect for the reader {**}.

{*} because it is more common in speaking than the "to wear" construction for enigmatic reasons because "to wear" is shorter and simpler and clearer.

{**} and to this reader 100,000 words in the same voice regardless whether in dialogue or in narration that have the exact same style is boring.

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Re: wear vs. wearing

Just an aside--my very upper class ex-husband used to cringe when he heard anyone use the term "golfing."  He'd always murmur under his breath, "must be something done on a public course."  Moral of the story:  the lower classes and teens love to "gerundize" words, but that doesn't make it right.

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