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Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006Is this correct English?
I was wonderning if you can say in English that something does not apply to companies that are younger than five, or younger than five years. Is this good English, and is there a better way of saying it? Thanks in advance! > I was wonderning if you can say in English that something does not > apply to companies that are younger than five, or younger than five > years. Is this good English, and is there a better way of saying it? > Thanks in advance! It's not wrong, but it's not the usual way of saying what you want to say. One better alternative is "This does not apply to companies that have been in existence for less than five years." To anyone who wants to replace "less" with "fewer" in that sentence: <http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html#more>.  SignatureBob Lieblich So there! > > I was wonderning if you can say in English that something does not > > apply to companies that are younger than five, or younger than five > > years. Is this good English, and is there a better way of saying it? > It's not wrong, but it's not the usual way of saying what you want to > say. One better alternative is "This does not apply to companies that > have been in existence for less than five years." The flexibility of English also allows us to recast it as a positive expression rather than a negative one: "This applies only to companies in business for five years or longer." SignatureDon Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada) |
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