: Floating vs Float I was writing a short story piece where one person drops something in the water. I got puzzled by the following two choices. Google books seem to be using both of them.

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Sink/Sinking would be better as a work, because if it floated, it wouldn't be going towards the bottom.

The wallet didn't actually sink to the bottom - it was swallowed before it got there. So they did not in fact watch it "sink to the bottom". They did watch it as it was in the process of doing this, so they watched it "as it was sinking towards the bottom". This has the sense of what was expected to happen, but in the process of this occurring, it was interrupted, and never finished.

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I don't think either one is quite right. To see why, try reversing the events:

As a big fish came in and gobbled up the wallet, they both watched the wallet float down to the bottom of the water.

If each event is really happening "as" the other happens, you would be able to reverse the events and the sentence would still make sense. But this reversal doesn't work very well, so "as" is probably not right.

"As" almost works. There is a kind of simultaneity here: The fish comes in as the wallet floats down. But "to the bottom" suggests that the wallet hits bottom. If that's true, then the fish doesn't gobble it up as they watch it float down.

So your puzzle about float versus floating is probably telling you that something else is wrong with the sentence.

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Main Answer
Since the gobbling happens during the floating down action, and not after the wallet's hit bottom, you want a construction that's continuous. Therefore, floating is better. However, you already have another continuation 'flag', for lack of a better term, in that 'as'. That 'as' puts you in the middle of the action (in this case the watching, I believe), and frees you to use 'float'.

Therefore, either sentence works, and you can choose whichever feels better to you.

Additional points
That said, I think you have more problems than just float/floating. Like the fact they've only stepped outside, they're not over water when he drops the wallet. Unless they're already in some boat, you should replace "went outside" with "went to the _____ (river/lake/pier/boat/etc.)".

Also, it's "to fish, not "for fishing".

You don't need "both" in "as they both watched". "They" already refers to the two of them.

"the water" should be in sentence #2 , telling the reader what Mike dropped his wallet into, and removed from sentence #3 since it's understood the bottom refers to the water bottom.

"fish came in": 'to be' and 'to go' verbs are weak, and easily over used. They're not interesting since they are very generic action verbs. I'd suggest replacing "came" with something like "zipped", "dashed", "darted", or even just plain old "swam".

And finally, you don't need to repeat "the wallet" twice in the last sentence. It's repetitive, so replace the second one with "it" -- "gobbled it up". This holds true even if you split that last sentence into two, which is something I would do (but that's my style). If you did that, you could even replace both "the wallet"s with "it"; you can't if it's one sentence because then you'd have a repetitive "it".

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