If you think/start thinking you're smarter than everyone you're partly uneducated

[Ashraful Haque]

I was talking about self-help books with someone and he goes to the gym I said books are like supplements they work only if you put in the work. This is what I said next:

1) "If you drink whey protein but don't workout, it won't help you much to build muscle."
2) "If you start drinking whey protein but don't workout, it won't help you much to build muscle."

I always get confused giving examples like this. I feel like I should use 2 ('ing') since I'm talking about drinking starting from now and since he doesn't actually drink whey protein. But then again it's just an example.

I said the following to someone:
3) "If you think you're smarter than everyone you're partly uneducated"
4) "If you start thinking that you're smarter than everyone...."

The same problem with this one. He doesn't actually think that he's smarter than everyone. I was just giving an example.

 

[GoesStation]

"Workout" is a noun. The verb you're looking for is "work out". This is a common pattern with compound nouns and nouns that started life as compounds. "Workout" probably began as "work-out". When such nouns become common, which often happens very quickly, they usually lose the hyphen and get joined into a single word. The verb usually remains two words.

 

[Ashraful Haque]

"Workout" is a noun. The verb you're looking for is "work out". This is a common pattern with compound nouns and nouns that started life as compounds. "Workout" probably began as "work-out". When such nouns become common, which often happens very quickly, they usually lose the hyphen and get joined into a single word. The verb usually remains two words.

Thank you very much for pointing this out. But this doesn't actually answer my question :-?
When giving examples do I use the continuous tense?

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I was talking about self-help books with someone who goes to the gym. I said books are like supplements. They work only if you put in the work. This is what I said next:

1) "If you drink whey protein but don't work out, it won't help you much to build muscle."
2) "If you start drinking whey protein but don't work out, it won't help you much to build muscle."

I always get confused giving examples like this. I feel like I should use 2 ('ing'), since I'm talking about drinking starting from now and since he doesn't actually drink whey protein. But then again it's just an example.

I said the following to someone:
3) "If you think you're smarter than everyone else, you're poorly educated/mininformed/conceited/wrong/ignorant."
4) "If you start thinking that you're smarter than everyone...."

The same problem with that one. He doesn't actually think that he's smarter than everyone. I was just giving an example.

Workout is a noun. Work out is a verb phrase.

 

[Ashraful Haque]

The tenses/aspects in all your sentences are OK. They are all general statements; #1 and #3 don't imply that the person addressed is actually doing these things.

Someone told me that 1 and 3 would be the better options for examples like these. Would you agree with it?

 

[Ashraful Haque]

3) "If you think you're smarter than everyone else, you're poorly educated/mininformed/conceited/wrong/ignorant."

Can you please tell me what's wrong with 'partly uneducated?'

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Can you please tell me what's wrong with 'partly uneducated?'

It doesn't mean anything. There's no such thing as 100% educated or 100% uneducated, so there's no such thing as partly educated or partly uneducated.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Someone told me that 1 and 3 would be the better options for examples like these. Would you agree with it?

We've answered that. All four are fine.