My dear friend is being too critical of me. I wrote the following in my resume:
Wrote a program in R to efficiently integrate and match student data from multiple sources.
Then he says "So did your program/code actually work?" He says that the infinitive form suggests only why I wrote the program and not if the program actually worked or not. He says that the infinitive version makes it seem like I'm probably hiding that fact that after hours of coding, the program didn't actually work. He suggests I that change the wording to indicate my code actually worked:
Wrote a program in R that efficiently integrated and matched student data from multiple sources.
Is there an actual difference between the two? If my friend is correct, I'd probably have to go change every sentence of that form "Verb-ed XYZ to verb ABC" to "Verb-ed XYZ that/and verb-ed ABC".
Developed a model to identify, analyze, and explain economic inefficiencies in the system.
The above would then become
Developed a model that/and identified, analyzed, and explained economic inefficiencies in the system.
Note: This comment perfectly summarizes what my friend is saying:
To be clear: to + infinitive indicates your intention. that + simple past indicates your accomplishment. – Jeffrey Carney
24 mins ago
Best Answer
Strictly speaking, the friend is correct here. I am reminded of a famous exchange from Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I:
The distinction between purpose and result can be subtle but very important. The Sorcerer's apprentice cast a spell to animate one mop and bucket. But that wasn't the result.
In most contexts the difference will not be noted, as the intent will be obvious. But a resume is apt to be scrutinized closely, not just for what it says, but for how it says it, as a test of the applicant's communication skills. So I would write it to emphasize what you accomplished, not what you intended, and use "Developed a model that..." (not "and").
In response to a comment:
The reason I prefer "that" to "and" here is that "I did X and Y" indicates association, and possibly sequence, but not causation. It is a weak joining. "I went to the park and played basketball" probably means that the person played basketball in the park, but could mean he went to the park, swam there, then came home, then played basketball. "I went to school and texted Jo" was the texting done at school or after school? "Developed a model and identified..." does not make it clear that the model did the identifying, it may have been quite separate. The use of "that" makes the causative connection much more clear, which in a resume is important.
Where "that" does not work some other form must be found, it is not a bad idea to avoid excessive parallelism anyway. The other form might use "and" but if a stonger connection can be made it would be well to do so.