For the purpose of

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Grammarist

The wordy phrase for the purpose of can usually be shortened, often to just one word, usually to. For example, let’s shorten this sentence:

Commercial shows are one-off projects put on for the purpose of making money. [Chicago Tribune]

Here’s one alternative:

Commercial shows are one-off projects put on to make money.

Another example:

He says Evite created the ID for the purpose of sharing information with Facebook. [PC World]

This might be better:

He says Evite created the ID to share information with Facebook.

In both cases, we’ve shortened for the purpose of to to and changed the gerund to an infinitive. But there are other possibilities. Even the the three-word phrase in order to is a little less wordy than for the purpose of.

The phrase for the purposes of is much the same, though its best one-word replacement is usually for instead of to—for example:

But this same technique can also be used for the purposes of censorship [… can also be used for censorship]. [Independent]

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