The use of the Gerund in Italian is often different by the use of the Gerund (the "ing" form) in English. In many situations the English uses the Gerund while the Italian uses the Infinitive. That's why we would like to focus on when (not) to use the Gerund in Italian. At the same time we will conduct an analysis of the Gerund in Italian vs Infinitive in order to tell you when to use the Infinitive instead of the Gerund.
By the way we have to consider a couple of situations in which the English uses the Gerund and the Italian doesn't.
You can see that Italian uses the Infinitive as subject, the English uses the Gerund.
The second aspect to keep in consideration is the role of the Gerund in a sentence. In Italian it refers always to the subject of the sentence, in English this is not necessary. If I say in Italian: "Ho visto Maria tornando da scuola" ("I have seen Maria coming back from School"), it is clear that "I" was coming back from School, not Maria. In English instead you can understand that Maria was coming back from school when you saw her.
Finally there are many situations in which English uses Gerund while Italian uses the Infinitive. We divided them into 4 categories.
To know more about the Indefinite Italian Moods, like the Italian Gerund take a look on our previous post about Italian Moods and Tenses.