I am trying to find out if this question is correct. Did Wang Bo used to be awkward? Should I write "use to be" instead of "used to be," or is "used to be" correct in this sentence?
These make up the vast majority of hits for 'can help doing something' in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. In the sentence given though, help is quite definitely a verb, and used in an affirmative context, so it would be best to have either a plain infinitival or to -infinitival following it.
If "used to" is a set idiomatic phrase (i.e. not a tense), then why would it change its form from "use to" to "used to" for the sentence as it does in the positive?
Federal prosecutors recommended a 15-year prison sentence for former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who was convicted this summer of trading his political influence for bribes. Prosecutors accused the ...
BEDFORD, Pa. (WTAJ) — A man who hoarded and abused dozens of dogs in his Bedford County home is appealing his sentence. Nyal Piper was sentenced to 90 months to 40 years in state prison after pleading ...
Your original sentence is different in that you've used the word this twice in the same sentence. In that sentence, you need to start with a dummy pronoun (it) which serves a grammatical role rather than a semantic one: It has been like this for years. Plus, it isn't normally any clearer if you use it instead of this, generally speaking.