Although hand-written letters may convey personal

I have a silly doubt on this one ... Does not option B convey the meaning that it is the letters that take an effort to write ? I had difficulty with this question .. experts please help !

Option B : letters take far more effort to write than emails do ---> letters don't take an effort to write ! ? ! Comparison must be between the effort to write letter and effort to write a mail.

spetznaz It's an unfortunate fact about English (and many other languages, too) that the most common, everyday words often have the largest range of meanings. In this case, you've been thrown off by an alternative meaning. Here, "take" means "require."

sayantanc2k, your explanation gets at this alternative meaning a bit. For instance, using the "placeholder it," I might say "It takes a lot of time to learn to play an instrument." What takes a lot of time? Learning to play an instrument. But without an alternative meaning, "takes" still doesn't make sense. Learning an instrument doesn't "take" anything, but it requires a lot of time. This is a very common expression.

Making authentic soba noodles takes a lot of skill.
It takes two to tango.
"You're a crook!" "Oh yeah? Well, it takes one to know one." (In other words, if one is to recognize a crook, it is necessary to be a crook.)

sayantanc2k and DmitryFarber Thank you for the response. Can you explain why D is wrong ?

Lack of parallelism:

The compared elements are:

X: writing letters takes effort
Y: it does for emails (it takes for emails).

The elements are not parallel. In order to use Y in the form it is in, X should have been:

X: it takes effort for writing emails

The correct usage then would be:

... it takes far more effort for writing letters than it does (takes) for writing emails.

Nonetheless, idiomatically effort to write would be better than effort for writing since an intention is depicted. The following would thus be even better:

... it takes far more effort to write letters than it does (takes) to write emails.

Hello. I have a few questions about the correct option ("...letters take far more effort to write than emails do"):
- Why is it correct to end with "do"?
- If it did not end with "do", would it still be correct?
- If we replaced "do" with "take", would it still be correct?
- Is the answer the same if "to write" is excluded?

1. In parallel structures it is often a practice to use "do" within the second element rather than repeating the verb itself used within the first element. In such cases, the verb "do" replaces the verb in the first element. The other repeated part ("effort") can be omitted without obscuring the meaning.

2. It is allowed to omit the repeated portions from the second element, even the verb, as long as the meaning is not obscured. Therefore it is also allowed to omit the verb "do" from the second element. However quite often, without the verb "do", the sentence becomes ambiguous:

I like sweets more than Jane.

The above sentence may have two meanings:

I like sweets; Jane likes sweets. But I like sweets more than Jane does. ("does" is used to replace "likes", "sweets" is omitted)
I like sweets; I like Jane. But I like sweets more than I like Jane.

In order to clarify which meaning is intended, it is often preferable to retain the "do" ( in case the first one is intended).

3. Yes, that would be still be correct. But as mentioned above, it is a common practice ( and a better practice) to replace "take" with "do" in order to avoid repetition.

4. Probably not, omitting "to write" would make the sentence a bit ambiguous since the reader would still wonder letters require less effort to do what..... though grammatically the sentence would still be correct.

Although hand-written letters may convey personal regard as well as old-fashioned charm, harried professionals eventually recognize that letters take far more effort than writing emails do.

A) letters take far more effort than writing emails do

B) letters take far more effort to write than emails do

C) writing letters takes far more effort than emails do
--> wrong comparison.

D) writing letters takes far more effort than it does for emails
--> wrong comparison.

E) to write letters takes far more effort than for emails
--> wrong comparison.

A and C incorrectly compare the effort of writing letters to emails, themselves.

‘it’ in D refers to ‘writing letters’, so this sentence won’t make a bit of sense.

E has a //ism problem similar to A and C.



B is the right answer.

Question:sayantanc2k

Although hand-written letters may convey personal regard as well as old-fashioned charm, harried professionals eventually recognize that letters take far more effort than writing emails do.

A) letters take far more effort than writing emails do
B) letters take far more effort to write than emails do
C) writing letters takes far more effort than emails do
D) writing letters takes far more effort than it does for emails
E) to write letters takes far more effort than for emails


In OptionB if I rephrase the sentence as per your explanation then the sentence becomes :
To write letters take far more effort than emails do
Now my doubt here is that in the above sentence, isn't there a SUB-Verb agreement error:
SUB-To write letters( Singular) VERB: take ( Plural) ?

Hi!
I chose B because of subject-verb agreement. I thought C was wrong because it should have been 'take'. Is this is the correct line of reasoning or am I mixing up my concepts? Also , I thought that it should have been 'writing emails'.

Although hand-written letters may convey personal regard as well as old-fashioned charm, harried professionals eventually recognize that letters take far more effort than writing emails do

B) letters take far more effort to write than emails do
C) writing letters takes far more effort than emails do

I am skeptical that how can we outright reject option C. Whether "writing" could not be treated to be common for "letters" and "email". Even if it is not common for both, whether we can't treat it as the ellipsis for "email" ?

AjiteshArun
AndrewN

Hello, abhishekmayank. If you straighten out each answer choice, you can expose the problems in choice (C):

B) letters take far more effort to write than do emails [to write]
C.1) writing letters takes far more effort than do [writing] emails
C.2) writing letters takes far more effort than do emails [to write]

Writing is a singular action with a singular verb agreement in takes, and effort is a singular noun, so we would expect does to follow in choice (C.1). In the latter interpretation, in which we can use do to agree with emails we still have a suboptimal pairing of writing and to write. Choice (B) is much cleaner, both in terms of grammar and meaning.

I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me about this one.

- Andrew

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