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Why would someone say "I've made the decision to..." instead of "I have decided to..."?
It might be little to go on, but there must be a general reason for this not so subtle change of tense
3 Answers
- RayLv 66 years agoFavorite Answer
It's just a choice of style - nothing to do with importance (though quite possibly the speaker *wants* you to think it has more weight).
As Erik says, "made the decision to" is rather more formal than using the verb "decided to".
It's altogether characteristic of formal style to inflate a verb into a longer phrase using the equivalent abstract noun: "we concluded that" -> "we came to the conclusion that", and such like.
Source(s): Native UK English speaker, technical writer - CogitoLv 76 years ago
The former implies that the decision is a really important one, which took a lot of serious thought and consideration. It sounds like a really big deal.
The latter could be used to refer to which sandwich filling to use.
