I know there's a thread on this already but I can't find the answer there, I'd appreciate any insight!
It's a tricky one. "I prefer to travel by train to by car" Is it right? The "…to by…" feels wrong. Is there maybe an implied infinitive or something else before the second choice, implied in by the use of "by", so that "I prefer to travel by train than by car" is actually right because one is sensing "I prefer to travel by train than (to travel) by car" or "I prefer to travel by train (rather/more) than by car"?
The "prefer….than…" form feels best to me, but is the real answer that we have to dump the "by" altogether and say "I prefer to travel by train to car?" so that we can use the "prefer….to…." form for nouns, as the rule tells us to? But that doesn't sound quite right? Is the whole sentence just barking up the wrong tree or trees!
Which is it? What does anyone think? Thanks for your help, because I need to decide whether the first version – "I prefer to travel by train to by car" – is right or wrong. It seems wrong to me, but I can't say exactly why!
Best Answer
It's "I prefer [something] to [something else]" but you need to use a lot of caution. If you use "prefer ... to," you should stick to single word entities, as in "I prefer coffee to tea, and tea to juice."
If you need to describe your preferences where more complex things are concerned, you'd be better off using the expression "favor [...] over," as in "I normally favor public transit over driving."
A healthy alternative would be "I'd rather take the train than drive" and "I'll take a lanky girl over a dumpy one any day."