I had written The effect of traumatic experience may be graver if… and the editor has corrected it to The effect of traumatic experience may be more grave if… Surely grave conforms to the regular rules for comparatives? Am I missing something? (I note that graver is also a tool for making engravings – but … Read more
What is the difference between “acoustic” and “audio”? Background: When I think of the class of data in the binary computer file, I don’t know the difference. One of my coworkers asserts that it is acoustic and not audio. I treat it as data. It is non-musical data. I’m guessing that my coworker understand acoustic … Read more
1 question. Can you please help to understand the use of adverb in this sentence structure and which one is correct!? Open the brackets: 1. A turtle moves…. (slow) than a rabbit. Which one is correct “more slowly” or “slower “? 2 question. Why do we use anybody instead of everyone in this sentence? As … Read more
Do -ist words (e.g. racist, sexist, etc.) have superlative or comparative forms? Answer Some -ist words are used as adjectives, as I describe in my answer to “Adjectival Usage of Racist“. The -ist words that are used as adjectives, such as racist and sexist, form periphrastic superlatives and comparatives using most and more. This is … Read more
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language says this (Page 1119): Temporal contrasts The main contrast may be a matter of time, expressed by tense: [38] i It is better than [it was]. ii It wasn’t as good as [it is now]. Note, however, that where contrastive present time is associated with the comparative clause … Read more
Is there a good single word for ‘less expensive’? I often see people using ‘cheap’ to describe it, but I feel it does not express the intention. For example, I prefer to say ‘Flight tickets are less expensive.’ instead of ‘Flight tickets are cheap’. Answer low-cost : obtainable at a low cost — U.S. News & World … Read more
I am very confused with the following sentences and I would like to ask you all what you think. I have as many books as you do. This means, if you have 6 books, I have 6 books too. I get this. Then if you say, I have one third as many books as you … Read more
In my opinion, the second part of a comparative clause should be a complete sentence. But I’m always confused by some comparative clauses as some clauses are incomplete. For example, are both the following two sentences right? He always spent more money than George spent. He always spent more money than George spent it. In … Read more
I’m not a native speaker, and my teacher taught me to use "the biggest number of . . ." when comparing amounts of some things, but I’ve checked it in google which seems like "the largest, the greatest, the highest, and even the most number of. . ." are actually used more often. 1. Which … Read more
Let’s say, if there were 4 cities, A, B, C and D 1,000 people live in city A. 2,000 people live in city B. 3,000 people live in city C. 4,000 people live in city D. – The second largest number of people lives in city C. The sentence above would be considered fine. What … Read more
