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Suppose I wrote the following:

I decided the target for our firm is to be to provide better services.

Would this be correct?

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  • "...is to be this, to provide better services."
    – Sean D
    Commented Nov 6, 2014 at 17:19
  • 1
    What @StoneyB says (as usual): it is grammatically okay, but stylistically lacking.
    – user6951
    Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 3:58

3 Answers 3

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It is grammatically acceptable; but it is gnarly to read.

There is a linguistic rule-of-thumb called horror aequi which states that people don't like to hear or read identical constructions too close together. The back-to-back to infinitives violate this rule; you would do better to express futurity with will:

I decided the target for our firm will be to provide better services.

In addition, target is not a good choice here. In business-speak, a target usually means a specific measurable goal to be achieved in a specific period, such as ‘$20M revenue in 2015’ or ‘Top 5 market share by Q3 2018’. ‘To provide better services’ might better be characterized as your firm’s ‘mission’ or perhaps ‘strategy’.

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The correct form would be

I decided the target for our firm is to provide better services.

Drop the 'to be'

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  • 1
    This has different meaning. Your variant means that the target is (and has been) the same, not that is to be so in the future.
    – Anixx
    Commented Nov 6, 2014 at 9:22
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    OK, I didn't get this meaning from your question. If you mean a plan for the future, then the usage is correct. Commented Nov 6, 2014 at 10:10
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I decided the target for our firm is to be to provide better services.

Two ideas seem to have become conflated here. Compare:

  1. Our firm is to provide better services.
  2. Our target is to provide better services.

In [1], is the modal (Palmer 1999.164), semi-modal (Leech, 2204.104), modal idiom (Quirk et al, 1985.135) or quasi Modal (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002,113-4).

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