Usage of to: What we are going to do now is (to) change gears.

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hello

Which one is grammatically correct?

What we are going to do now is change gears
What we are going to do now is to change gears

is “to” necesssary in the above sentence? What is the reason for or against?

2

Hello Ched,

Both sound fine to me; the “to” is optional.

I would regard the two forms as simply two different kinds of ellipsis:

  1. What we are going to do now is [we are going to] change gears
  2. What we are going to do now is [we are going] to change gears

(Other members may have other explanations, though.)

All the best,

MrP

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Edit to correct “are” to “as”

3

We (my students and I :slight_smile: ) have no explanation, just the rule in our Grammar books that in certain expressions with do (All I did was…) we can omit to.