Find the Error 44
(Extract adapted from an article in a national newspaper)
What kind of mistake do you see? (Choose one:)
- apostrophes
- articles
- doesn't make sense
- punctuation
- singular / plural
- spelling
Answer: spelling
The spelling mistake in this example comes in the first sentence. '… a much
high quality selection of games …' should read: '… a much higher quality
selection of games …' The reason for this is that we can't use a simple
adjective like 'high' with 'much'. We need to use the comparative form of the
adjective – 'higher' – because the sentence is making a comparison. It's
comparing the number of games and movies available now with the many
more titles that will be available by Christmas. We could see the full comparative
sentence if the author had completed the comparison by using:
'than they have now' at the end of the sentence. For example: 'By Christmas,
owners of the new Channel Hoppa console will have a much higher quality
selection of games and movies from which to choose than they have now'.
However, this is excessively wordy and the meaning of the sentence is clear
without using 'than...'
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