Verb patterns with objects in English: want somebody to do, make somebody do, and see somebody doing

Some of the most ordinary sentences in English have three moving parts: a verb, a person, and a second verb. I want you to listen. She made me wait. We heard him leave. The pattern looks simple until you build one yourself, because each first verb makes its own demand on the second. Some insist on to. Some forbid it. One or two let you choose.

There is no rule of logic underneath this; there is only a short list of verbs and the habit each one keeps. The good news is that the list divides into three clean groups, and once you know which group a verb belongs to, you never have to think about it again.

The to-infinitive group: want, ask, tell and friends

The largest group takes verb + object + to-infinitive:

• I want you to listen.
• She asked me to wait outside.
• They told us to come back on Tuesday.

The negative goes in front of the to, not inside the first verb: She told me not to worry, which is a different sentence from She did not tell me to worry. The first is advice; the second is an absence of advice.

want never takes that

This deserves its own heading, because it is the single most reliable way to sound foreign in an otherwise perfect sentence. Spanish says quiero que vengas. French says je veux que tu viennes. German, Italian and Polish all build the same shape, so nearly every learner produces it in English:

• I want that you come to the party. Wrong, always.
• I want you to come to the party. Right, always.

There is no register, no dialect and no century of English in which want that works. The person you want to do the thing becomes the object of want, and the thing they should do arrives as a to-infinitive. Would like, being polite want, follows it exactly: I would like you to meet my sister.

make and let: no to at all

Two everyday verbs refuse the to completely and take the bare infinitive: make (force) and let (permit).

• She made me wait. Not made me to wait.
• They let us leave early. Not let us to leave.

The pair covers the whole scale of power: make means the person had no choice, let means the choice was theirs and you stepped aside. Between them, allow does the same job as let but keeps its to, which is where learners trip:

• They let us park here.
• They allow us to park here.

Same meaning, different pattern, and no way to predict it except knowing the verbs. If you catch yourself writing let somebody to do, the fix is always to delete the to.

The passive twist

Turn a make sentence around and the to comes back from wherever it was hiding:

• Active: They made him wait.
• Passive: He was made to wait.

Nobody said this was fair. Let avoids the problem by having no comfortable passive at all; English borrows allow instead: We were allowed to leave early, not we were let leave.

help: the one that takes both

Help is the only common verb in this family that genuinely does not care:

• She helped me carry the boxes.
• She helped me to carry the boxes.

Both are correct everywhere. The bare form is more common in speech and has been gaining ground in writing for a century, so if you want a single habit, drop the to and you will sound current. Just do not let help persuade you that the other verbs are flexible too. They are not.

see, hear, watch, feel: do or doing

Verbs of perception take an object and then offer a real choice, and the choice carries meaning:

• I saw him lock the door. You watched the whole action. The door is locked, and you could say so in court.
• I saw him locking the door. The action was in progress as you passed. You saw the middle of it, not necessarily the end.

The same split runs through hear, watch, feel and notice:

• We heard her sing the whole song. (all of it)
• We heard her singing as we walked past. (a moment of it)
• I felt the ground move. (one complete movement)
• I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. (ongoing)

When it does not matter, and often it does not, English speakers reach for the -ing form slightly more, because most of what we witness is caught in progress. But if you are reporting a completed event, the bare form is doing real work: I saw him leave means he is definitely gone.

get somebody to do

Get is the persuasion verb, and it keeps its to:

• I got him to change his mind.
• Can you get the children to bed by eight? (and with a verb: get them to go to bed)

Get suggests effort: charm, argument, patience or mild trickery. I made him sign is force; I got him to sign is a story with steps in it. For the machine version of this pattern, where you arrange for a thing to be done rather than a person to act (I had my hair cut, I got the car repaired), see causative have and get.

Common mistakes

Ranked by how often learners actually make them.

1. Want that. I want that you help me must become I want you to help me. No exceptions, no softer version of the rule.
2. make somebody to do. She made me to cry has one word too many. Force takes the bare infinitive: she made me cry.
3. let somebody to do. Same disease, same cure: let me go, never let me to go.
4. say instead of tell. He said me to wait is wrong twice over. Say never takes this pattern at all; the ordering verb is tell: He told me to wait.
5. Forgetting the passive to. He was made wait misses the to that the passive restores: He was made to wait.

Practice

Fix each sentence or mark it correct. Answers are below.

1. I want that you read this.
2. The guard let us to take photographs.
3. She helped me find my keys.
4. They made him to apologise.
5. I got my sister to lend me the money.

Answers: 1. I want you to read this. 2. The guard let us take photographs. 3. Correct, with or without to. 4. They made him apologise. 5. Correct: get keeps its to.

The patterns on this page all hang a second verb off an object. When there is no object in between, a different set of habits decides between to do and doing; that is the territory of gerund and infinitive. And since tell somebody to do is how English reports orders, this page is half of the machinery behind reported speech.