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I would like to know what the difference is between "I love doing something" and "I love to do something".
For example:
- “I love singing.”
and,
- “I love to sing.”
When I was young, I was told that "love doing something" is right, but one day, I found Jessie J wrote "I love to sing" on her Instagram.
Meaning
I love to do that
I love doing that
In many, if not most situations these two sentences can be used interchangeably. But they can have very slightly different meanings too. When we use verbs like like, love, hate plus an -ING form, it generally means that we like, love or hate something while we are actually doing it. When we say that we like, love or hate TO DO something, it means that we like love or hate the practice or effect. This is easiest to show with the verb LIKE.
We usually use like to do something when we mean that we like the effect of doing something, or we think it is a good idea to do this thing because of its wider effects:
This would imply that it's a sensible thing to do. In contrast, we usually use like doing something when we find the experience itself pleasurable or enjoyable. Consider this version of the sentence:
This would tend to imply that you were a bit of a masochist! It means that you actually enjoy going to the dentist.
Another way to think about it, is that when you say "like doing it" you like it while you are doing it. When you say like to do it it means you like it after you've done it.
With the verb LOVE, it's more difficult to find a clear situation where you will love to do something but hate doing it. It is perhaps possible. Consider:
NOTE
The information above is true for British English and for other varieties such as Australian and New Zealand English. These differences have been well documented in various grammar sources. However, it seems from comments here that for some varieties of American English, there is no difference between like to do and like doing. See F.E.'s comments below for further information.
Grammar
In the phrases love to do it and love doing it, we understand that the subject of LOVE is the same as the subject of DO. Very often though, we can also find nouns that end in -ing [sometimes we can make nouns ending in _ing]. For example, there is a noun singing. Many nouns, like the noun singing, describe actions. When we use the NOUN singing and we don't say who the actual singer is, then it can be anybody:
The first sentence says that I love the habit or practice of singing jazz. Maybe I love to do it at certain times or for certain occasions. The second sentence says that I really enjoy singing jazz. In the third example singing does not have a direct object. This word could be a noun or a verb. If it's the noun then this sentence means that I love listening to people singing jazz. If it's the verb it means that I love doing the singing. If it's a noun we will use an adjective to describe the singing. If it's a verb we will use an adverb:
The first sentence means I like it when other people sing quietly. The second sentence means that I like to sing quietly myself.
I love singing.
I love to sing.
"Love" is one of the verbs that takes after it either a to-infinitive or an -ing form, without any difference in meaning.
According to grammar, although both sentences should convey the same meaning, sentence #1 is a bit ambiguous. This ambiguity arises because "singing" is not only a verb (present participle) but also a noun that means an act or performance of singing. So the sentence may also be understood to mean that you love to hear singing or love to hear people sing. However, if there is an object after "singing" such as "I love singing songs/this song", there is not an iota of doubt that you love to sing.
As said by the comments:
In I love to sing, the verb "love" is said to control the subject of the verb "sing", resulting in the phenomenon often called equivalent noun phrase deletion (equi-NP deletion). Basically, in this construction, the subject of the subordinate verb is constrained to be the same as the subject of the main clause. The underlying semantic structure would be "I love: (I sing)".
I love singing is ambiguous. The word "singing" can be seen as general activity of singing (where I express my appreciation of listening to songs), where the subject (and all other thematic roles) are left unspecified and made vague by the nominalisation (good example of political rhetoric pattern here: "The pollution" - who polluted? shrug).
Or, it can be seen as a gerund complement that means the same as the case with the infinitive in it, with the same control phenomenon (compare: I love singing blues which can't get the first, unrestricted interpretation - but is itself then syntactically ambiguous, with the other meaning being "I love blues which sing").
Since, now the question is edited, I'm rewriting the answer with a bit different approach.
The verb you are concerned is 'love'. Now all verbs have their patterns. This means what verbs take after them depends on the verb. Some verbs take infinitive, some take '-ing', and there are many other patterns.
Getting back to your 'verb' -love. Now this special verb takes both -to+verb and -ing. This means, it can have both
I love singing (verb taking 'ing')
I love to sing (verb taking to+verb)
Good read about verb pattern is here on the BBC.
It is good to know that if you are talking about your hobby, the construction I love singing is more common.
