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Mephorium Posted 22 years ago
Grammar

Omitting the prepositional phrase.

In the sentence "We used thirty-six megawatts of electricity and a liquid helium chilled supercapacitor to teleport a sewing needle through twenty feet of lead," can the prepositional phrase "of electricity" be omitted if a megawatt is understood to be a measure of electric power?

If so, is it merely a matter of style; will including it cause redundancy?
  

Top answer

In each pair of sentences below, the first sentence uses a unit of measure that is unambiguous enough to predict the entity being measured from general knowledge or from context. Nevertheless, it is far more common (and perfectly acceptable in my opinion) to add the entity being measured explicitly, regardless of any possible redundancy. Our division of the company is allotted 50 reams a month.

— CalifJim

  • In each pair of sentences below, the first sentence uses a unit of measure that is unambiguous enough to predict the entity being measured from general knowledge or from context.
  • Nevertheless, it is far more common (and perfectly acceptable in my opinion) to add the entity being measured explicitly, regardless of any possible redundancy.
  • Our division of the company is allotted 50 reams a month.
  • Our division of the company is allotted 50 reams of paper a month.
  • We bought two loaves yesterday.
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2 Answers
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In each pair of sentences below, the first sentence uses a unit of measure that is unambiguous enough to predict the entity being measured from general knowledge or from context. Nevertheless, it is far more common (and perfectly acceptable in my opinion) to add the entity being measured explicitly, regardless of any possible redundancy.

Our division of the company is allotted 50 reams
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