by Anonymous on October 25th, 2009

Anonymous

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He was still alive to see the company he started so many years ago, expand to become one of the largest corporations. Is expand correct or should be expanded.

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  • by Teresa on October 25th, 2009

    Teresa

    I know you didn't ask this, but you should take out the comma.

    As for your question: you probably want "expand." Both "expand" and "expanded" could be used correctly, but they mean something different.

    First, to make this clearer, I'm going to break the sentence down to its basic form: "He was alive to see the company expand."

    As you can see, "expand" works perfectly well.

    On the other hand, "He was alive to see the company expanded" is also correct, but it's an incomplete thought. The missing information is: expanded by who or what? Basically, if you're specifically trying to refer to a body (a person, people, a machine, whatever) that did the expansion, then use "expanded." (You don't have to fill in that missing information -- the body who did the expansion -- in this sentence: it could be implicit, assuming you discussed that body in other sentences in the paragraph.)

    If you're just trying to say the company, as a unit unto itself, expanded, use "expand."

    Tip: When grammar issues arise, the easiest way to solve them is to break the sentence down to it's bare minimum, like I did above. I hope that helps!!

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