vikram4689 wrote:Thanks Ron. Sometimes i get confused between less and lower.
First, in one of your explanations i read "lower should be used for things that can be described as low". I tried this rule but was not able to convince myself. For e.g. To check if lower is appropriate in case at hand - i checked if "price" can be described as "low" - "Price is low" - but this alone does not make sense, i guess i am missing something. Can you please elaborate by taking an example
i think you're seeing what the real issue is here: namely, it's
very hard to describe these kinds of things in terms of "rules". instead, it's generally better to learn them through trial and error -- basically, accumulating examples until your mind begins to see (largely subconscious) patterns.
this is not the same as rote memorization; it's more like developing a certain type of intuition through experience.
nonetheless, i will make my best attempt at a general description.
basically, there are two kinds of things you can describe as "low":
1/
things that are physically low, in terms of literal vertical placement:
the sun is low in the sky.
when the tide is low, people like to walk on the beach.
this usage of "low" is extremely literal, so i doubt that it will cause you any issues.
2/
things that are in some sense quantitative*, including abstractions:
if your confidence is low, your test performance may be adversely affected.
that's a really low price.
*note that, here, "quantitative" doesn't have to mean that there is a literal number attached to something; instead, it basically just means that the notion of "higher and lower levels" makes sense in terms of whatever concept. for instance, nobody is going to start hanging numerical values on things like confidence, but confidence is still "quantitative" in the sense that there are definitely lower and higher amounts of it.
Second, what exactly "abstract description" mean . I wasn't able to follow it even when you mentioned, in other post, that we should use "greater" for uncountable nouns describing "abstract characteristic" e.g. power, influence etc.
this is also a rather complicated issue. most importantly,
the problems that test this issue are very old problems, so i think it's safe to say that the focus of SC has shifted away from issues like this (almost certainly because they are so nuanced; they aren't really "reasoning tasks" in the pure sense).
in any case -- "greater" is generally used for things that are abstract, such as power and influence and so on (like you said). by "abstract" i mean things that aren't concrete: for instance, if i have 10 books and you have 8 books, you can't say "i have greater books". etc.
what's potentially confusing here is that you
can say that one
number of books is greater than another
number of books -- but that's because "number" is itself an abstract concept. weird, but i think you get the idea.
if you ARE talking about one of these abstract concepts, then the decision between "greater" and "more" hinges on exactly what you mean.
in these cases, "more" generally implies greater
breadth,
diversity, or
completeness of the quality in question, whereas "greater" implies a higher degree of the same particular version.
for instance, "more talent" would generally be used to refer to someone who is better
at more things than someone else, while "greater talent" would be more appropriate for describing a more prodigious ability
at one particular thing (like, one person is a better jazz singer than another person, or something).
it is extremely unlikely that you will be tested with this level of subtlety; i'm providing this information almost entirely because it's enjoyable for me to think about these things. (as a native speaker of the language, i normally just intuit them; this is the first time i've ever thought about spelling this kind of thing out. good times.)
