请问：下面这道题目是选A还是B？
- Can you tell me which choice I should make?
- One of the new salesmen has ...... me to buy a new car.
A. convinced B. persuaded
答：在这道题目中，其实A和B都可以选的，尽管B更好一些。
我们通常说one "persuades" another TO DO something而 "convinces" another OF something.尽量避免用"convince to"，句子"she convinced him to resign"被传统语法认为不如"she persuaded him to resign."好。（来源：Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage .New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998., p. 492.）
但随着时代的发展，用convince to的情况越来越普遍，尤其是在美国英语当中，我们特地从美国词典中搜集了这方面的资料，供感兴趣的读者参考：
A）According to a traditional rule, one persuades someone to act but convinces someone of the truth of a statement or proposition: By convincing me that no good could come of staying, he persuaded me to leave. If the distinction is accepted, then convince should not be used with an infinitive: He persuaded (not convinced) me to go. In a 1981 survey, 61 percent of the Usage Panel rejected the use of convince with an infinitive. But the tide of sentiment against the construction appears to be turning. In a 1996 survey 74 percent accepted it in the sentence I tried to convince him to chip in a few dollars, but he refused. Even in passive constructions, a majority of the Panel accepted convince with an infinitive. Fifty-two percent accepted the sentence After listening to the teacher's report, the committee was convinced to go ahead with the new reading program. Persuade, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable when used with an infinitive or a that clause in both active and passive constructions. An overwhelming majority of Panelists in the 1996 survey accepted the following sentences:
After a long discussion with her lawyer, she was persuaded to drop the lawsuit.
The President persuaded his advisors that military action was necessary.
Thus, it seems likely that advocates of the traditional rule governing persuade and convince will find fewer and fewer allies in their camp. （From: The American Heritage Dictionary)
B）persuade or convince
The verb persuade has long been complemented by two kinds of grammatical structures: either the infinitive (implying an action), or a finite clause (implying a change of mind):
She persuaded me to give up smoking.
She persuaded me that I should give up smoking.
Until C20, only the second kind of structure was used with convince:
She convinced me that I should give up smoking.
The other construction, in which convince implies mobilizing action, appeared in American English during the 1950s:
She convinced me to give up smoking.
It raised some hackles, reviving questions which had earlier been asked about how persuade should be construed, according to Webster’s English Usage (1989). But it concludes that convince to is now “fully established idiom,” and this view is implicit in contemporary British grammars such as the Comprehensive Grammar (1985) and the Longman Grammar (1999), both of which present the construction with no comment to suggest its illegitimacy. Still it’s probably newer to British ears than American. In BNC data convince to occurs in the ratio of about 1:12 to convince that, whereas it’s 1:2 in CCAE.
Note finally that both persuade and convince can be followed by of:
He persuaded me of the need to give up.
He convinced me of the need to give up.
(From: The Cambridge Guide to English Usage .2004)