Friday, June 04, 2004

Help me out with this grammar question
OK, readers. Click on the comments button and give me your thoughts.
I had two teachers who drilled into us that "other" should compare like things (just as AP says "another" should). So it would be: He convinced 10 senators but said he still had to convince the 45 other lawmakers (or, shorter, the 45 others). The thought here is that senators=lawmakers but 10 does not equal 45.

I've searched and searched for this and can't see it backed up anywhere. My dictionaries, of course, say other stands for the remaining one or more. So I wonder, does it really matter? Substitute in "the remaining," and you could just as easily say he had to convince the remaining 45, which sounds a lot better to me than the 45 remaining.

Hit that comment button, please ...

1 Comments:

At 6/6/04, 4:50 PM, Blogger Doug said...

Tara:
Great that you found the site. Thanks for visiting.
But where shall we put that "other" -- before or after?

 

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