RSP92 wrote:
If Option A was "there are fewer than one-quarter that many" would it be correct?
What does "that" refer to in Option A?
Well, there'd no longer be a concrete grammatical error, but you could argue that this construction is still less than ideal, because the "that," while not technically wrong, is confusing. Take another example:
While half the llamas on Tim's farm enjoy wind-surfing, there are at least one-quarter that do not enjoy water sports of any kind.
Here, "that" is used to introduce a full clause describing 25% of the llamas.
In your example, when I see "There are fewer than one-quarter
that" my initial expectation is for "that" to be used the same way, and I'm about to see that there fewer than one-quarter that
do something. But that's not what we get. If I reread the sentence, I can eventually figure out that "that" is used as an adverb describing "many," so it's not a concrete error. But if I have a choice between one option I need to reread to make sense of, and one option that's crystal-clear the first time through, I'm going for crystal-clear every time.
I hope that helps!
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