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- adjectives - Smaller vs. less vs. lesser - English Language Usage . . .
Smaller Smaller is the relative adjective (or sometimes adverb or noun) of small, indicating that referenced term it has more of the characteristic of smallness I ordered the smaller of the two cup sizes offered When using small, no other size needs to be explicitly considered
- grammar - When to use smaller or less - English Language Usage . . .
The pile of junk has gotten smaller Less is used in cases where there is a lower amount of something that does not have defined quantities You cannot accurately quantize 'junk' There is less junk than before You would use fewer if you had a way of quantizing the subject of discussion For example: There are fewer bags of junk than before
- What do we call the “rd” in “3ʳᵈ” and the “th” in “9ᵗʰ”?
@WS2 In speech, very nearly always In writing, much less so I think what may be going on is that one just assumes that “June 1” is pronounced “June First”, or “4 July” as “the Fourth of July”
- differences - Lower number vs. smaller number - English Language . . .
Joking aside, only less than and greater than are uniformly understood as < and > relation respectively; the other words (e g smaller, lower) are often used colloquially to mean less than, whose absolute values are less than, written smaller, etc however their usage are more ambiguous and so should be avoided when writing mathematics EDIT:
- Difference between town, city and metropolis?
hamlet: a small settlement, generally one smaller than a village; village: a group of houses and associated buildings, larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town, situated in a rural area; town: an urban area that has a name, defined boundaries, and local government, and that is larger than a village and generally smaller than a city
- adjectives - Lesser number vs. smaller number - English Language . . .
I am wondering about the correct use of lesser smaller in the following phrase: This library has a smaller lesser number of books than the National Library I did find another thread on nearly the same question, where one answer states: "As a general rule, 'smaller' is used for size, whereas 'lesser' is used for quantity " In this particular
- word choice - What is the name of the symbols - and gt;?
+1, I like that this is the first answer to address the multiple Unicode code points involved However, I think you might mention that regardless of the characters' names or official prescriptions for use, the less-than and greater-than signs are commonly used as a type of brackets, probably because they can easily be typed and their display is more widely supported than that of the other symbols
- word choice - Can something become increasingly smaller? - English . . .
In regard to the phrase "increasingly smaller": Please be aware this clumsy, irritating usage is called a "contradiction in terms " Applying the adverb "increasingly" to the adjective "smaller" is a wordy, self-contradictory way of writing This confusing writing style should be avoided completely, in my opinion
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