An irritating error I'm finding all-too-often lately is the phrase "try and [verb]."
For example:
"try and open the window"
"try and find the pink sweater"
"try and look up the date"
Why write the phrase as if separate actions are being completed? Trying AND doing something else?
To "try" is not here a distinct undertaking. We don't try and open, try and find, or try and look up. We try to open the window, try to find the pink sweater, try to look up the date.
Perhaps we are trying to find the pink sweater while opening the window. A little insane, but no more crazy than the time I couldn't find my glasses anywhere, so I put my glasses on in order to see better while I looked for them. True story.
But even in such a situation, we still wouldn't write "try and open." Talk about meaning being hopelessly obscured by awkward and ungrammatical phrasing. Maybe a mother admonishes her forgetful daughter to locate the always-misplaced sweater, necessitating a comma:
"I can't find my pink sweater."
"Try, and open the window." The girl might look harder for her sweater if she's cold from the open window?
Please, don't write: try AND. Write: try TO.
