Grammar question

[Wictorian]

Poll

[tikker]

Disclaimer: not a certified English grammar expert.

 

"Many" is a quantifier for countable things, so it wouldn't work for "stuff". "A lot of" can work for both countable and uncountable things, so I would guess "a lot of". That depends whether the quantifier can apply to both words or just one though. I'm also not sure what the grammar rules are regarding the mixing of countable and uncountable nouns, so the correct version might even be to repeat the quantifier after switching.

[Anicool007]

"a lot of" E.g. you wouldn't say, "How many people is here?" You would use 'are'. Hope this helps.

[Commodus]

7 hours ago, Wictorian said:

Poll

None of the above!

 

It's a confusing sentence regardless of the option you use. "And stuff..." are you referencing an abundance of specific other things, or is this the "stuff" catch-all people use when they want to hint at a variety of other items while staying vague? If it's the former, you can write "there were many people and books" (or whatever the other subjects are). If it's the latter, you can drop either the "many/a lot of" or "and stuff" sections (and preferably use a noun more specific than "stuff"). If your goal is only to highlight how many people there were, for example, you can just say "there were many people."

 

This is how you fine-tune your writing skills: be clear about your meaning and avoid fluff. I could write a whole treatise about the evils of padding sentences with "be able to."

[Wictorian]

On 1/8/2022 at 6:20 PM, Commodus said:

None of the above!

 

It's a confusing sentence regardless of the option you use. "And stuff..." are you referencing an abundance of specific other things, or is this the "stuff" catch-all people use when they want to hint at a variety of other items while staying vague? If it's the former, you can write "there were many people and books" (or whatever the other subjects are). If it's the latter, you can drop either the "many/a lot of" or "and stuff" sections (and preferably use a noun more specific than "stuff"). If your goal is only to highlight how many people there were, for example, you can just say "there were many people."

 

This is how you fine-tune your writing skills: be clear about your meaning and avoid fluff. I could write a whole treatise about the evils of padding sentences with "be able to."

We had this question in out exam so it should be either of them. I think a lot of would be correct, no? Why if so?

[tikker]

41 minutes ago, Wictorian said:

We had this question in out exam so it should be either of them. I think a lot of would be correct, no? Why if so?

I mean if you really want to know you'd be best off asking on a linguistics forum/stackexchange/subreddit.

[Heliian]

Many people and stuffs

 

 

[Commodus]

5 hours ago, Wictorian said:

We had this question in out exam so it should be either of them. I think a lot of would be correct, no? Why if so?

If it has to be one of those two, you'd be right. I just don't like the core sentence!

[Wictorian]

13 hours ago, Commodus said:

If it has to be one of those two, you'd be right. I just don't like the core sentence!

Yeah neither do I..