ESL General English Grammar Questions

Re: amount vs. number

Huevos — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:51:04 GMT

Anonymous
I think 'amount' usually goes with uncountable nouns.

Crime in this context is not uncountable, but generic. I see your choices as follows:

A substantial amount of the nation's crime is committed
A substantial number of the nation's crimes are committed

Re: amount vs. number

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:27:32 GMT

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.

Re: amount vs. number

optilang — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:38:03 GMT

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.

amount vs. number

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:16:49 GMT

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.