Sentence of the Week #11

[From Michelle Yeoman:]

Editing Solution: Last Week’s Sentence

Thank you for reading the 11th installment in this series. As a reminder, below is Sentence of the Week #10:

The response to our survey was greatest than expected.

The error in this sentence is the adjective greatest, which should be greater. Thus, the corrected sentence reads as follows:

The response to our survey was greater than expected.

Adjectives commonly have comparative and superlative forms. For example, the comparative form of the adjective large is larger (meaning “more large”), and the superlative form is largest (meaning “most large”).

For many adjectives in English, the comparative form is made by adding –r or –er and the superlative form is made by adding –st or –est. The webpage “Forming Comparative and Superlative Adjectives” provides further guidance.

In our sentence last week, the size of the response is being compared with what was expected. Thus, greater is correct.

And now, onward to this week’s sentence.

Sentence of the Week #11:

The sentence below has 1 definite error:

This new technique is more perfect than the traditional method.

Please correct the error, and submit the corrected sentence and any remarks as a comment on this post. I plan to post and discuss the solution next week.

Do you have a sentence that you would like us to consider using as the Sentence of the Week? Please e-mail submissions to Michelle at msyeoman@gmail.com with the subject line “Sentence of the Week”. Submissions should be your own work—don’t nominate a colleague’s writing :). 

Please also feel free to e-mail suggestions relating to this series.