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Is it poor style to say the following?

A lot of things we take for granted as trash, such as newspapers, magazines, old computers and cellphones, can actually be recycled in one way or another.

Aren't we supposed to say the following?

We take it for granted that a lot of things are trash, such as newspapers, magazines, old computers and cellphones, but actually they can be recycled in one way or another.

In authoritative dictionaries (both print and online), I can only find "take something for granted" or "take it for granted that" (if the object is too long).

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  • Why are you asking about this sentence? Did you find it in a publication somewhere? The place you found this sentence will tell us what kind of style is appropriate for it
    – gotube ♦
    Commented Jan 6, 2022 at 6:38

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You are correct - the first example is grammatically incorrect. But regardless of the grammar, I don't find "take for granted" to be a suitable phrase in this context at all. It is not just a substitute for the word 'assume'.

The saying to 'take something for granted' has a few different applications, but the primary meaning is to assume that something is a 'given', perhaps to assume that something will always be there without any thought or effort. I think this quote is implying is to not give something the proper thought. But what your quote seems to be saying is that people think certain things are trash. What you are actually trying to say is that they haven't considered the alternative, which is recycling.

I would have said:

A lot of things we consider to be trash, such as newspapers, magazines, old computers and cellphones, can actually be recycled in one way or another.

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  • I disagree: what exactly do you think is grammatically incorrect about the first sentence? We take these things for granted. In what way do we take them for granted? As trash. I don't think it's the best written sentence ever, but I don't see anything actually incorrect about it.
    – stangdon
    Commented Jan 6, 2022 at 13:13
  • @stangdon That's really not how "taken for granted" is used and it does not fit this context. Literally, it means that something is a "given". For example, we might take for granted running water in our homes, without giving much thought to how it gets there, or that some people don't have it. It wouldn't mean that the water isn't water, or that we haven't thought of alternative ways of getting water. In the OP's example, nobody is being "given" anything. There is no process being overlooked. The people who consider things "trash" are physically doing the throwing away themselves.
    – Astralbee
    Commented Jan 6, 2022 at 13:58
  • @Astralbee This is a literal, word-for-word translation of a Chinese sentence. It's interesting that there is nothing wrong with the Chinese.
    – Hua
    Commented Jan 8, 2022 at 7:41
  • @stangdon You're right to some extent. The following are two sentences from Corpus of Contemporary American English: 1. Most prospective parents take the process of procreation for granted as natural and practically automatic. 2. Modern societies have tended to take science for granted as a way of knowing, ordering and controlling the world. It seems that some native speakers do use the phrase in this way, though I'm baffled by such a usage.
    – Hua
    Commented Jan 8, 2022 at 9:17
  • @user443543 Your two examples don't disagree with my point, they support it. Nature, and science, are two things that people DO take for granted. They know they exist, but they know they work on their behalf, and they don't need to know much about either of those things for them to do so. Your example isn't like these. 'Trash' isn't something we take for granted.
    – Astralbee
    Commented Jan 8, 2022 at 12:28

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