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I have some problems to relate some sentences to each other, specially when they get long. I observed "to" and "for" could be used for such relations, but don't know their proper usage and their differences.

For example I am writing a sentence

In this paper, we propose a formalism to construct a wrapper for extracting [or to extract?] structured data from a Web page.

vs.

In this paper, we propose a formalism for constructing a wrapper to extract [or for extracting?] structured data from a Web page.

To avoid repetition of "for" or "to", in each sentence, for the second clause I used the other alternative.

What is the general rule? Are all the four combination of "to" and "for" in my sentence, correct?

By the way, how can I get mastered with sentences combination.

Ahmad
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1 Answers1

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You can use more clear phrases than just "for" and "to". You could try "in order to", "for the purpose of" and "intended to".

If I were writing this, I would say "In this paper, we propose a formalism to use in constructing a wrapper for the purpose of extracting structured data from webpages."

modulusshift
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