I am comparing the waiting times in the different regions of a given country. Only region A had low average waiting time; other regions (B, C, and D) had high average waiting times.
Except for Region-A, all the regions had higher average waiting time.
Is the sentence above grammatically correct? I am not sure whether I should use
except or except for;high or higher. How could I improve the above sentence?
Answer
Except for is acceptable. The problem with this sentence lies elsewhere: higher is a comparative (high, higher, highest).
The statement is therefore incomplete. If all regions (other than A) had higher times, where is the comparison? Higher than what?
Say there were regions A, B, C, D. Then the sentence says that B, C and D had higher times than … what? The comparative reference is not to A, because A could be lower, as in this example:
"Except for region A (which had lower time), B, C & D had higher time". This too lacks a comparison.
A meaningful use of the construction might occur in something like:
"In the UK, except for Region-A, all the regions had higher average waiting time than waiting times in the USA regions".
If we wish to avoid geographical reference, another example might be "For cardiothoracic surgery, except for Region-A, all the regions had higher average waiting time than those for neurosurgery". This would imply that only region A had a lower or equal cardiothoracic waiting time when compared to neurosurgical waiting time.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Budu Gulo , Answer Author : Anton
