amount vs. number

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Anonymous

#525713 Wed, 11 Jun 08 07:16 AM

Hi, Why is it good to use the word 'amount' instead of "number" here? A substantial amount of the nation's crime is committed by a small number of bad actors -- I think you can count the number of crime occurances. Would you say since the word 'crime' is uncountable here, the use of 'amount' is better?I think 'amount' usually goes with uncountable nouns.

Anonymous

Nouns, Numbers, Uncountable nouns, Countable nouns

optilang

#525749 Wed, 11 Jun 08 08:38 AM

Since it is the nation's crime it is uncountable therefore use amount.

To use number you would have to change the sentence to:

A substantial number of the nation's crimes are committed ..

However, since we have the word number used in the sentence it would not sound good to have it repeated.

A substantial amount of the nation's crime is committed by a small number of bad actors --

A substantial number of the nation's crimes are committed by a small number of bad actors --

The first sentence sounds much better.

optilang

Joined on Tue, May 13 2008

Poland

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Numbers

Anonymous

#564133 Tue, 09 Sep 08 03:27 PM

Would you say how much crime? or how many crime? Obviously, much. Thus it's the amount of crime, not number of crime. You would, of course say, number of criminal acts.

Anonymous