Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Omission of "to" after "is"

> All you can do is remove yourself from her mailing list
> remove 这事做什么词性 充当什么成分

You can omit "to" only if it follows "all [or what] ... to do", e.g.,

All you can do is wait.
All there is to do is wait.
What needs to be done is ask for more money.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is it OK to say it in this way?
All you can do is removing yourself from her mailing list

Yong Huang said...

It's not wrong, and people will understand you. But why not say it in a more common way, "All you can do is remove..."?