Charge Someone With Doing vs. Charge Someone To Do
Cambridge distinguishes “charge someone with something/doing something” for accusation from charge + person + to-infinitive patterns used in other senses, such as requiring payment to do something.
ReviewedEvidence1 sourceSectionEnglish Usage
Quick answer
Use “charge someone with doing something” for an accusation. A form such as “charge someone to do something” belongs to another sense, commonly a fee/payment construction, not the accusation pattern.
Key details
Confusion Familygrammar-and-usage distinction
Rule Familypreposition and verb-complement pattern
TermsCharge Someone With Doing, Charge Someone To Do
Further guidance
Boundary
Do not “correct” every charge + person + to-infinitive sequence to with + -ing: first identify whether charge means accuse or instead concerns payment, permission, or another sentence function.
Construction
For an accusation, use charge + person + with + noun/-ing. Charge + person + to-infinitive can occur with other meanings and must not be treated as an interchangeable accusation complement.
Decision
Use “charge someone with doing something” for an accusation. A form such as “charge someone to do something” belongs to another sense, commonly a fee/payment construction, not the accusation pattern.
Sources and evidence
Sources are shown with the role they play in this guide. Historical or style-sensitive claims are kept within the evidence boundary described above.
Charge — Cambridge Dictionary↗ (opens in a new tab)Cambridge Dictionary · Current dictionary constructions distinguish charge someone with something/doing something from other charge + person + to-infinitive uses, including fee contexts.
Cambridge records “accuse someone of something” and specifically “accuse someone of doing something.” That supports of + -ing when the action is the alleged wrongdoing.
Cambridge records accustomed to something and gives -ing examples such as being accustomed to working or being treated in a particular way. Do not interpret the “to” after accustomed as an infinitive marker in this construction.
Cambridge distinguishes adapt to a situation or activity from transitive patterns such as adapting plans to fit new circumstances. The surface sequence “adapt … to + verb” therefore needs its grammatical structure identified before choosing an -ing form or infinitive.
Cambridge distinguishes “apologize to someone” from “apologize for something/doing something.” You can combine the two roles, as in “apologize to someone for doing something”; “to” marks the recipient while “for” marks the reason.
Cambridge distinguishes intransitive “approve of” for a favorable opinion from transitive “approve something” for official acceptance or authorization. The official-authorization sense uses transitive “approve” with an object; do not collapse that separate sense into the “approve of doing” judgment pattern.
Oxford documents the person-action pattern as be banned + from + -ing and separately documents direct-object uses of ban. The cited evidence does not support person + to-infinitive as the equivalent prohibition construction.
