Practice choosing between gerunds (verb+ing) and infinitives (to+verb) in IT professional contexts.
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1 / 5
Complete the sentence: 'We decided _____ the database rather than rewrite the queries.'
'Decide' is followed by an infinitive: 'decide to do something'. This is a fixed verb pattern — 'decide' cannot take a gerund. Other verbs that follow the same infinitive pattern: 'agree to', 'choose to', 'plan to', 'refuse to', 'want to', 'need to'. Compare with verbs that take a gerund: 'avoid doing', 'consider doing', 'suggest doing'. Learning which verbs take infinitives vs. gerunds is essential for professional writing.
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Complete the sentence: 'Avoid _____ raw user input directly into SQL queries.'
'Avoid' is always followed by a gerund (verb+ing): 'avoid inserting', 'avoid storing', 'avoid exposing'. It can never take an infinitive. This is a critical pattern in security-focused technical writing. Other verbs that always take a gerund: 'consider', 'recommend', 'suggest', 'finish', 'keep', 'risk'. 'Insertion' is a noun — grammatically possible after 'avoid' but unnatural compared to the gerund. In code review comments, 'avoid doing X' is a standard pattern for flagging risky practices.
3 / 5
Complete the sentence: 'The team stopped _____ manual deployments after CI/CD was set up.'
'Stop + gerund' means 'cease an activity': 'they stopped doing manual deployments' — they no longer do them. 'Stop + infinitive' means 'pause in order to do something else': 'they stopped to do a manual deployment' — they paused what they were doing in order to deploy. This distinction is critical. In the sentence, CI/CD replaced manual deployments, so 'stopped doing' (ceased the activity) is correct. 'Stop to do' would imply they paused CI/CD to manually deploy, which is the opposite meaning.
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Complete the sentence: 'Consider _____ a feature flag before doing a full release.'
'Consider' always takes a gerund: 'consider doing', 'consider using', 'consider adding'. It never takes an infinitive. 'Consider to implement' is a very common error among non-native speakers influenced by languages where the equivalent verb takes an infinitive. 'Implementation' is a noun — 'consider an implementation' changes the meaning. In engineering recommendations and design documents, 'consider doing X' is the standard pattern for suggesting an approach without mandating it.
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Complete the sentence: 'We recommend _____ the logs before escalating the incident.'
'Recommend' takes a gerund when the subject does the action: 'We recommend reviewing...' (we recommend that someone review = we recommend reviewing). 'Recommend + infinitive' is used in some varieties of English ('we recommend you to review') but is considered non-standard. The gerund form is universally accepted. In incident response runbooks and on-call documentation, 'we recommend doing X before Y' is the standard phrasing for sequenced diagnostic steps.