Business_Spotlight_No3_202..

SKILL UP! 21

GRAMMAR CHECK

QUANTIFIERS

Because these nouns are sin-

gular, we use “much” and not

“many” with them — at least

in questions and ne gated

sentences. In affirmative

sentences, we normally use

“a lot of” rather than “much”.

The compara tive form of

“much” is “more”; the super-

lative form is “(the) most”:

(^) We have a lot of informa­
tion from them.
(^) We don’t have much expe­
rience in this area.
(^) Most advertising is carried
out online.
To talk about small amounts
of a singular uncountable
noun, use “(a) little”. The
comparative form is “less”;
the superlative form is “the
least”:
(^) There’s very little content
here.
(^) You should watch less
news.
To refer to large quantities,
use “a huge/large/massive
amount of”. Informally, you
might also hear “a bunch of”:
(^) There is a huge amount of
content available.

4. “Experience”
   This noun can be either countable
   or uncountable, depending on the
   meaning:

(^) We always deliver fantastic cus-
tomer experiences.
(= individual events/incidents)
(^) His experience in performance
marketing is limited.
(= knowledge/skills in general)

5. “Data”
   In Latin, “data” is the plural form of
   “datum”. Native speakers of Eng-
   lish generally ignore this fact and
   treat “data”(pronounced [(deItE])
   as a singular uncountable noun.
   Only in the scientific world is
   “data” more likely to be treated as a
   plural form, in which case, the sin-
   gular is then “datum”(pronounced
   [(deItEm]):

(^) The collected data was incredi-
bly insightful.
We can combine “data” with “set”
to create a countable compound
noun with which we can focus on
a particular kind or group of indi-
vidual instances of data:
(^) How many data sets will you
need to calculate the results?
(^) This data set is incomplete.