so much choice vs. so many choices
hi, on one of the exams, there is a sentence i find confusing, "there is so much choice." i am wondering why don't we say "there are so many choices "? thank you!
hello jennysh,
 


 you can say both because 'choice' is both a countable and an uncountable noun, and in most contexts you can use them interchangeably.
 


 when you use it as an uncountable noun, it's more general: there's so much choice on this menu.
 


 when you use it as a countable noun, it becomes more specific: there are ten choices of fish dishes.
我直接回答 the most 和 the best 的不同.


先複習一下:
有的形容詞比較級是在前面加上 more, 最高級是在前面加上 most.
有的形容詞比較級是在後面加上 -er, 最高級是在前面加上 -est. 如: richer, richest.
有的形容詞比較級和最高級是不同字. 如 good(well) / better / best


(1) among all the committee members, mr. smith is the most supportive one for employees' rights and benefits.
在這個句子裡, the most supportive 是 supportive 的最高級. 
我把句子改寫簡單一點, 讓你比較一下這三句:
(2) among all the students, john is the tallest one. 
(3) among all the students, mary is the most beautiful one. 

你會發現(1), (2), (3)其實是一樣的結構. 只是因為形容詞不同, 所以最高級的型態不同.

再來, 從簡單的開始, 在(3)中, 如果我們把 the most beautiful 換成 the best beautiful one 會變怎樣呢?
(4) among all the students, mary is the best beautiful one. 
先不管這個句子有沒有意義, 我特意將 beautiful one 標示成同一個顏色, 就是要讓你看出, 此時 best 這個字修飾的是 beautiful one 而不是beautiful.
換上一個有意義的句子:
(5) the best supportive bras have an inner support triangle that positions and supports the breast.
(6) clinical studies are being conducted without a clear definition of the best supportive care provided in the comparator arms of trials.
(7) the best supportive role that most adults can play is simply as a source of encouragement.

所以在這個題目中, 就算(b)這個選項改成the best supportive還是不能選, 原因是因為句意不對.

最後, 講一點關於the best 和 the most的相同, 就是the best 有一些慣用說法可以取代 the most 或是和 the most意思很接近. 我想這可能是你會混淆的原因.
if you like something best or like it the best, you prefer it.
ex: the thing i liked best about the show was the music.if you say that a particular person knows best, you mean that they have a lot of experience and should therefore be trusted to make decisions for other people.
ex: he was convinced that doctors and dentists knew best.

 2014-09-12 00:25:24 補充：
我也不太理解為什麼要去質或是量來去區分該用什麼, 這好像把問題複雜化了. the best除了我講的兩種習慣用法之外, 都是當成 good/well 的最高級, 如果你用good/well 解釋不通, 就代表不能用the best.

 2014-09-12 00:27:55 補充：
she is the most beautiful girl in her class. 你要說的是她是最漂亮(the most beautiful girl), 並不是要說她是最好的(the best girl), 所以當然是要用 the most. 應該沒有the best的問題. the reason they're different tenses is because each example has a different amount of certainty.

1. "biden said he would" this refers to an event in the future and the author is not sure if it will really happen or not.

2. "biden said he will" this refers to an event in the future the author thinks will happen

3. "fauci said it was safe" this shows no uncertainty. now, we don't know if fauci will say it's safe, but if he does say it's safe, then there will be no doubts about what he said. HM ok, another day, another try, but I gotta say: The seemingly endless lessons about numbers and numbers on top of numbers and more numbers are really disencouraging me a lot. It's been a lot of fun up to this point, but I really don't see the point in filling out so much about numbers for the sake of numbers o\_o Could you, like, do a little less of that? giving a name to checkboxes means grouping them together to the same question

if you have 10 questions, and each has 5 checkboxes, and you don’t group them together, that would mean having 50 checkboxes lumped together - maybe you have also pretty similar values etc…

you give each checkboxes group… i've been meaning to write a blog post on this for a while, but haven't got round to it yet, so i'll give the condensed version here :slight\_smile:

to understand why the if let syntax is the way it is, we should first look at the let syntax. in most cases, you'll see it used for simple variable dec… you can pick 1 senior in 5 ways, 1 junior in 4 ways, 1 sophomore in 3 ways and i freshman in 2 ways.
in all you can make these selections i 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 ways = 120 ways.
 
please note: selecting a committee is a "combination" problem, not a "permutation". what makes science and pseudoscience different is the way that they are meant to find out details about different things. there are some people who make use of pseudoscience when they would like to find evidence that will support the claims one doesn't substitute for the other; they are two very different things. so, if there's time for both, why not have both? the voting & ratings system is very different.

you get ratings usually from the other answerers on that question, & votes come from people who go to the vote section to vote on multiple questions for some extra points.

there are also answerers who vote for themselves, & yes, some of them do cheat & use email to tell their friends which answers to vote on. i've seen it done many times. Hint: there’s a saying in the electronics world that goes something like this: *“Don’t make it precise, make it adjustable!”*