This is what my American Heritage dictionary says: (in part)
See bolded/italic/underlined portion below.
use v. used, us·ing, us·es. --tr. 1. To put into service or apply for a purpose; employ. 2. To avail oneself of; practice: use caution. 3. To conduct oneself toward; treat or handle: “the peace offering of a man who once used you unkindly” (Laurence Sterne). 4. To seek or achieve an end by means of; exploit: used their highly placed friends to gain access to the president; felt he was being used by seekers of favor. 5. To take or consume; partake of: She rarely used alcohol. --intr. 1. Used in the past tense followed by to in order to indicate a former state, habitual practice, or custom: Mail service used to be faster.
I think you have misunderstood. “There used to be” is perfectly good in formal contexts. The construction “there formerly was” is also formally correct, but is often going to look positively pompous. The colloquialism, that should not be used in formal contexts is the negative “there didn’t use [or “used”] to be.” The formally correct negative version would be “there used not to be,” or (if you must) something like “formerly, there was not.”
I think using “used not to be” sounds less natural than “used to not be.” And I agree that “never used to be” conveys the same meaning, and it sounds even better than the other two.
Using didn’t used to or didn’t use both sound horribly informal to my ears. Around here, I’d expect it to be said by a self professed hillibilly.
For the negation of “there used to be” or “I used to”, I would most likely say “I didn’t use to”, or “there didn’t use to be”.
All “use to” constructions seem a little bit on the colloquial side, but not absolutely so. I would not be surprised to encounter it in a formal speech or business document. While it might surprise me in an academic paper, I can’t say I would always consider it wrong.
Do you also have “like to” meaning “almost” or “pretty much”? I’ve seen it used as in this example: “[The whisky] like to burnt my throat as it went down”, which seemed terribly ungrammatical to me, until I realized that “like to” functions as an adverb, not unlike nahezu in German (nahe=“near” and zu=“to”, hence “near-to” or “almost”).
In case you’re wondering, I’m paraphrasing Chuck Berry, describing his first taste of liquor in his memoir. He didn’t like it much, and has never been much of a drinker, since. He wasn’t from the South proper, but from St. Louis BTW.
I see your point, but I was referring to posts 4 and 11, where it has been said that the non-negated constructs, as well, were informal. Doesn’t seem to be the majority view here, but apparently the view exists.
I wouldn’t get used to using “used to” in formal writings. “Usually did,” “usually was,” just dropping the adverb, or whatever the context demands is not stilted (as some object to “formerly”) and serves just as well. Even better. For example, “The mail service used to be better,” could be better and shorter said by “The mail service usually was better,” or even dropping the “usually.” depending upon your meaning. Even better, mention a time when the service was better. “Used to be better” - when? “The mail service was better when it was part of the government, before the quasi-private company was set up.”
Well, you could just use a prepositional phrase as an introductory modifer: “Before, there wasn’t…” (you really should say before what as part of the phrase, but informally we could let it slide)
It’s grammatically correct and it doesn’t come off as particulary pompous or formal, IMO.
This usage helps to situate the timing of the sentence and can prevent having too many words in between the subject and verb. It also will prevent ending the sentence with a preposition. In a more formal context, you might could replace before with previously or formerly, unless you stated before what - and even then you might use prior to. Either way, it helps you stay away from potential misplaced modifer issues by sticking it up front.
Yes and no. Some of the ways that it differs (when used in the sense of the OP) are:
(1) It’s an auxiliary verb, needing a main verb to make its sense complete (though the main verb can be implied, e.g., “Do you go to church there?” “I used to.” – i.e., “I used to go to church there.”)
(2) The present tense is never used. If you say, “They use to go,” that would be read as a mistake for “used to go”.
(3) The present participle is never used. You can’t say, “He is using to go” or “He was using to go.”
It’s the double past tense, which I referred to above. The addition of the word “did”, not the negation, is the key.
Example of this rule (without a negation):
“Did you stop at the store after work?”
Right: “I did stop at the store after work.”
Right: “I stopped at the store after work.”
Wrong: “I did stopped at the store after work.”