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which one is correct?

1- to perform the prescription naturally removes tartar.

2- to perform the prescription naturally remove tartar.

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    Grammatically, you must use the singular verb form removes (same as To know him is to love him). But I don't understand what this text is supposed to mean, and it's not really a valid English utterance in any context I can think of. Idiomatically, we'd be more likely to use a gerund/continuous form here (performing, not to perform), but we don't "perform" prescriptions anyway. Nov 7, 2018 at 15:26
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    You have no present tense with an infinitive in your examples. Please clarify what you mean.
    – Lambie
    Nov 7, 2018 at 16:05
  • my English is not good at all, I suppose, that is why I can not understand what you mean either. What do you do with a prescription? you obey what the doctor write or you don't obey that. Well what about "performing" instead of "perform". I hope you can understand what I mean. If so. would you please write the whole of the sentence in correct form. No matter if some words change
    – AR AM
    Nov 7, 2018 at 16:27

3 Answers 3

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In a comment to the question, you indicated that your sentences could be rephrased to make them understandable. Doing so, there are two versions of the sentence that would be fine:

1) Following the prescription naturally removes tartar.
2) Following the prescription will naturally remove tartar.

Notice how the different constructions determine if it's removes or remove.

I can't be more precise as to which you want to use, because the exact meaning of what you're trying to convey isn't clear from your sentences.

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It's irrelevant whether it's an infinitive. If I understand correctly what you mean, "to perform the prescription" is a (singular) noun phrase playing the role of the subject of the verb "removes".

As Fumblefingers says, it is not clear what you mean by it, as the words you've chosen don't really go together.

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The first example explains what performing the prescription does, possibly as a side effect. In this example, the verb takes the third-person singular conjugation (with the "s").

The second example is an imperative, which explains how to perform the prescription. In this interpretation, the second example needs a comma after "prescription". Because the example is in the imperative, it uses the second-person conjugation of the verb (without the "s").

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  • I still have a question. can we use to + verb and then some verbs or not? I mean can I say for example " to go in dark path causes something" or not? I guess from the answers, that I can not . I must say "going in dark path.....". Am I right or not?
    – AR AM
    Nov 7, 2018 at 17:47
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    @ARAM -- Of the two choices in your comment, the gerund version is usually better. The infinitive version is sometimes okay, especially if you use parallelism.
    – Jasper
    Nov 7, 2018 at 17:58

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