Words for Quantity, Time, Description, and Place
A shipment arrives with 400 batteries for a job that needs 20. Is that supply ample, sufficient, excessive, or expensive? Three of those words are about amount and one is about cost, and only one of the three amount words carries the criticism the sentence is making. Words about quantity, time, description, and place are […]
Words for Quantity and Degree
There is a mistake that costs readers more than any other when they meet a degree word: they judge how strong the word is before checking what it is measuring. Strong on the wrong scale is still wrong. Abundant, acute, approximate, excessive, marginal, and negligible illustrate the problem well, because they cover four different scales […]