In this context:

"The kind/type of stress those activities tend to (verb)..."

  • I've found that kind / type are used interchangeably, is one more appropiate than the other?
  • Talking about the verb, I've found very few examples of sentences like "X gives/causes me stress", so I'm not sure if I could use one of them here or if there's another more suitable verb.

So: Which noun (kind/type) and verb (give/cause/provoke/other) would be appropiate for this sentence?

  • [The kind/type of stress those activities tend to (verb)] is just a noun phrase, not a sentence. Seeing you wrote The I guess that you're going to begin your sentence with this noun phrase, which is strange for me. Perhaps because it's too heavy. Let's consider it as just a noun phrase, without it being at the beginning of a sentence. In my opinion, either kind or type is fine. As for the verb, I personally tend to use simple words, so I think cause or induce is a good choice. – Damkerng T. Jun 22 '14 at 4:40
  • Thanks for noticing that it's just a noun phrase, although by the "..." I pretended to show it's going to be in a sentece, I could have expressed myself better. Anyway by the time I wrote it, I hadn't actually noticed it was just a noun phrase, so double thanks. I don't have a clear "sense of weight" when making sentences, so it's possible that I made it sound a bit strange. Do you know if that concept is searchable under an specific title or if it's just an ability adquired by being familiar with the language usage?. – Alejandro Veltri Jun 22 '14 at 5:48
  • I can only offer these two tips at the moment: 1) generally in English, more important things comes last (we can apply this concept not only to sentences, but also, for example, punchlines, conclusions, wrap-ups, etc.), 2) reading what you just wrote aloud helps (presumably, we've read lots of books, documents, etc. before we write our own stuff; reading aloud could help telling us whether our sentences have good balance or not). I believe that there are more resources on writing out there; I just don't know where myself, though. :) – Damkerng T. Jun 22 '14 at 7:13
  • Particularly in "medical" contexts, we often say stress is triggered by {something}. – FumbleFingers Jun 22 '14 at 11:53

I would say:

The kind of stress those activities tend to cause...

using kind for undefined or loosly defined cases. To the average person, stress is probably a loosely defined condition.

What kind of lunch are you having?

since there are more variations of food items than you would have in mind.

I would use type when referring clearly defined cases. For example, if I was a psychologist, I might say:

The type of stress those activities tend to cause...

because I would know specific types of stress one may experience.
type is also used to describe specific conditions, like:

What type of diabetes do you have?
I have type 2 diabetes.

Finally, in the above examples I would use cause for the verb, as this phrase describes a cause and effect relationship.

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