Quote:
(A) Less than 400 Sumatran rhinos survive on the Malay peninsula and on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, and they occupy a small fraction of the species’ former range.
This sounds perfectly fine to me… but it’s wrong, unfortunately. Whenever “less” is used to modify a noun, that noun must be non-countable. And you can definitely count rhinos, so it’s wrong to say “less than 400 Sumatran rhinos.”
So (A) is out.
Quote:
(B) Less than 400 Sumatran rhinos, surviving on the Malay peninsula and on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, occupy a small fraction of the species’ former range.
(B) has exactly the same error as (A): “less” can only modify a non-countable noun, and “Sumatran rhinos” are still countable.
For whatever it’s worth, I’m also not sure that I understand why “surviving on the Malay peninsula…” has been turned into a modifier. That phrase makes more sense as part of the main clause, as it is in (A).
But even if you don’t agree with me on that, the “less… rhinos” thing is definitely a problem. (B) is gone.
Quote:
(C) Occupying a small fraction of the species’ former range, the Malay peninsula and the islands of Sumatra and Borneo are where fewer than 400 Sumatran rhinos survive.
Ha ha, this is literally saying that “the Malay peninsula and the islands of Sumatra and Borneo” literally occupy “a small fraction of the species’ former range." And that makes no sense -- how could a peninsula occupy the rhinos' range? (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please read
this article about “-ing” modifiers.)
More generally, the construction of this sentence hides the most important part of the sentence. We have no idea that the sentence is about Sumatran rhinos until the last few words. That’s not cool.
So we have plenty of reasons to ditch (C).
Quote:
(D) Occupying a small fraction of the species’ former range, fewer than 400 Sumatran rhinos survive on the Malay peninsula and on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.
This looks better! “Occupying a small fraction of the species’ former range” correctly modifies the following clause: “fewer than 400 Sumatran rhinos survive…” That works, especially since the countable modifier “fewer” correctly modifies “rhinos.”
So let’s keep (D).
Quote:
(E) Surviving on the Malay peninsula and on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, less than 400 Sumatran rhinos occupy a small fraction of the species’ former range.
This isn’t terrible, except for that little modifier again: “less than 400 Sumatran rhinos” doesn’t work, since “less” can only modify non-countable nouns, and rhinos are clearly countable. (And large. I have a friend in Namibia who was tossed by one. He flew about 15 feet in the air, and lived to tell the tale. Tough dude.)
Anyway, (E) is gone, and (D) is our winner.
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