Ich bin kein native speaker, aber m. E. sollte es entweder "recommend including" oder "recommend that you include" heißen, aber nicht "to include".

"recommend to include" klingt einfach falsch.

Google bietet beide Varianten, die Variante "recommend to include" sogar häufiger (was aber natürlich nichts über die Richtigkeit aussagt).

Bin aber ebenfalls keine native-speakerin.

I would normally be hesitant using personal pronouns in a legal context but since you have already used "I", it follows that "you" is equally appropriate.

All of the following are correct:

"recommend including an appropriate guarantee..."
"recommend that you include an appropriate guarantee..."
"recommend that an appropriate guarantee/warranty be included..." (this one is very slightly more formal)

"recommend to include" is not correct.

As a lawyer, and native speaker, I personally prefer either the 2nd or 3rd option above. (also, as a lawyer, I note there is a difference between a guarantee and a warranty in English but that wasn't the topic of your question!)

Good luck,

Thanks a lot, your comments are very helpfull and it's suprising to see (again) that the number of Google-hits is actually not a criteria for a correct use of English language.

With regard to the guarantee /warranty (also thanks for this): Am I right that it should be better a warranty in this context?

Depends a little on the context but I would suggest that warranty is likely to better in an agreement for sale and purchase (if this is what it is?), perhaps "an appropriate warranty clause".

Dass der Autor "guarantee / warranty" schrieb, deutet ja schon darauf hin, dass er sich eines Unterschieds bewusst ist.

Der Unterschied zwischen Gewährleistung und Garantie ist noch größer, denke ich, und den verstehen ja leider auch nur wenige.

Die Google-Zahlen sind erschreckend!

I agree with Sophil, point for point, as well as with Roscoe.

Don't trust Google on this one -- *'recommend to include' is just wrong, because 'recommend' takes the gerund. On closer inspection, those web hits may mostly be from non-native speakers, because gerunds and infinitives are always a problem for people learning English.

For more tips, search in the archive (Suche in allen Foren) under 'gerund.' IIRC, the thread called 'Das leidige Gerundium' has a long list of verbs in it.

Wie steht's mit "It is recommended to..."? (Es wird empfolen..")

Ich weiß, dass normalerweise nach recommend ein gerund oder ein Satzteil mit "that...you..." folgen kann.
Weiterhin kann man dass "that" auch weglassen und hat dann die Möglichkeit: "I recommend you do...[such and such]."
Aber wie seht's nach einem Passiv, "it is recommended..." klingt da "to do..." nicht besser als "It is recommended doing..."?

Yes, I think you may have a point: if someone were determined to use that construction, then to would be better than -ing.

But that's a big if, since almost any other option would usually be better than that extremely German-sounding passive, e.g.,

We recommend that ...
Please be advised that ...
Guests/Users should ...
Please be sure to ...
It is useful/preferable/advisable/a good idea to ...

If you did use it, 'It is recommended that (guests/users/buyers/you) ...' would probably still be better than to. There's just something very grating to me about to with no real subject, maybe because it can't actually perform the action.

If you have a few practical examples, we might be able to suggest other options more suited to a particular context.

 

Thanks hm-us!

As far as examples go, Google returns 38.100.000 hits on "it is recommended to..." -- mostly from manuals etc. -- and 57.100.00 hits on "it is recommended that..."

Of course, as mentioned above, just because Google finds lots of it doesn't make it right.

However, even searching the "site:BBC.co.uk" returns 119 hits and cambridge.org even returns 1460 hits when searching .

My wife's Australian and she didn't think is sounded so bad. But as they say, "Australia is a beautiful place -- 300 million flies can't be wrong!"

In our case we were just wondering about it, as one of our students wrote it and we were at a loss whether to mark it as "wrong" or not since recommend usually isn't followed by an infinitive with "to" but rather a gerund or a "that"-clause.

In this case "to" sounded quite ok and even better than ~ing.

One of Google's 1st examples: "It is recommended to perform the 5 Cs simultaneously..." (From WikiAnswers) sure does sound better than "It is recommended performing...."

Any more help on this one? Can we consider it a grammatically correct phrase?

Henk

I agree with #1 Sophil and #3 Roscoe on BrianRoy's original question.

@#10 Henk: I'm a native (US) English speaker and "recommend to include" sounds plain wrong to me (regardless of Google results). But I see your dilemma about whether to mark the student's work "wrong". Had I been in your situation, I think I would not have subtracted points from the student's grade, but would still have used it as a "teachable moment" by letting the student know that "recommend including" and "recommend that you include" are much more natural-sounding.

Incidentally, part of the reason some native and non-native English speakers alike may habitually avoid constructions like:

It is recommended that _______ be included.
It's essential that he go with us.
It was critical that she come to the meeting.

is that they are unsure about the correct use of the subjunctive.

the rule is: verb plus preposition is always followed by a gerund (also called "the ing-form"
as Cambridge Uni. International Dictionary of English puts it: "Notice an infinitive can never be used after a preposition".

The problem is that "to" is both a preposition and is also used before the infinitive.

"it is recommended to perform a check before..." is OK - (verb+infinitive)

but "will contribute towards improving profits" - (verb+preposition+gerund)

@ mike

Language is strange, isn't it?

Why does "It is recommended to perform a check before..." sound only OK,
but "It is advisable to perform a check before..." sound much better?

Maybe it's because "advisable" is a pure adjective and "recommended" is a past participle being used as an adjective or maybe it's just a personal preference on my part, but I'd welcome your thoughts.

@ Santa Monica Dave

agree: "recommended to perform" sounds almost wrong for some reason although it is correct.

but "it is recommended that a check be performed... although longer, sounds perfectly OK, I'd say

I guess it's the "to", which, also being a prepostion, leads one to half expect a gerund


as you say, Language is strange

>>Maybe it's because "advisable" is a pure adjective and "recommended" is a past participle being used as an adjective

That's pretty much what I was thinking; the participle makes it into the passive voice, but there's no real subject (Caution is recommended) and no agent with 'by' (The hotel was recommended by every guidebook). Without either of those, the ultra-passivized form just sounds so awkward, even though it's not grammatically incorrect in the way that *It is recommended doing is.

Like you, I wouldn't take off points for it, but if I were Henk, I would strongly recommend that students not use it. I doubt that Australian usage is particularly suspect, but German interference might be, and the same is true of other languages, which might go a good way toward explaining a large portion of the internet hits.

(OT: Just in the last couple of years, now that social media have taken over the world, internet hits for almost everything have become even less reliable than before. Even sites such as the BBC are full of blogs and user comments; university sites often include student blogs and homepages, and Google is notorious for inflating its numbers, which tend to drop by orders of magnitude a few pages in.)

It's essential that he go with us.
It was critical that she come to the meeting.


heißt es nicht "It's essential that he goes with us"??
and "...she comes to the meeting"??

bin verwirrt:-)

und was ist mit "...a check be performed"
wieso "be performed"...?

ich versteh das nicht:-)

HILFE:-)

HILFE:-)

weiß das jemand?

Am besten stellst Du diese Frage noch einmal, aber im Sprachlabor.
Hier bei den Übersetzungsanfragen geht sie nur unter, SCHREIEN hilft da auch nicht ;-)

One form is definitely wrong - although not yet mentioned here: I recommend you to do sth. (probably by analogy with I advise you to do sth.)

@16 & 17 -
Your question may be off the topic of the original question, but just in case you do not receive a satisfying answer elsewhere:

It's essential that he go with us.
It was critical that she come to the meeting.

These may seem strange, but they are correct.

Expressions like:
It is important that ...
It is critical that ...
We felt it crucial that ...
The president expressed a wish that ...

are followed by the subjunctive mode in English:
... she come to the meeting.
... you be invited to the party.
... he attend his daughter's graduation.
... we be present at his wedding.

The subjunctive mode in English has only one spelling for each verb, which is the same not only in the future, present, & past tenses, but also in all the conjugations (I, you, he/she, we, they). That's the easy part. The hard part is that the subjunctive form is unfortunately only fully "visible" with the verb "to be". Every other verb seems to only change its spelling for subjunctive when conjugated in third person singular.

This is a difficult rule to master in one's own language, but takes even more work in a second language. Hopefully this helps. Good luck, NC!