5 exercises — practise formal purpose connectors "so as to" and "in order to".
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "in order to" to express the purpose of a refactor in a design proposal?
"We propose splitting the monolith in order to scale each service independently" correctly uses "in order to + bare infinitive" to express formal purpose. Option B is missing the required "to" before the infinitive. Option C incorrectly follows "in order to" with a gerund instead of the bare infinitive. Option D scrambles the word order of the fixed phrase "in order to".
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "so as to" to express purpose while avoiding ambiguity with "so that"?
"The retry logic backs off exponentially so as to avoid overwhelming the downstream service" correctly uses the full three-word connector "so as to" before the bare infinitive. Option B drops "as", which is not a valid shortening of this fixed phrase. Option C reverses the word order to "as so to", which is ungrammatical. Option D drops the required "to" before the infinitive.
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses a bare infinitive of purpose as the more concise, less formal alternative to "in order to"?
"We cache the response to reduce database load during peak traffic" correctly uses the bare infinitive of purpose "to reduce", the most common and least formal way to express purpose in technical writing. Option B incorrectly uses "for" before the bare verb. Option C incorrectly uses a gerund after "to". Option D drops the required "to" from "in order to", leaving an incomplete connector.
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly negates purpose using "in order not to" rather than the informal "so as not to" in a formal specification?
"The scheduler throttles background jobs in order not to starve foreground requests" places "not" between "order" and "to", which is the standard negative pattern for this formal purpose connector. Option B places "not" after "to" instead, which is non-standard for "in order to". Option C places "not" at the front, changing the meaning to negate the whole clause rather than the purpose. Option D drops the required "to" before the bare verb.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly chooses between "so as to" and "in order to" for a formal compliance document, keeping both instances grammatical?
"The system logs are encrypted at rest so as to satisfy the audit requirement, and access is restricted in order to limit exposure" correctly forms both fixed purpose connectors in full, each followed by a bare infinitive. Options B, C, and D each drop or reorder words within "so as to" and "in order to", producing ungrammatical fragments.