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English 1b3 Posted 16 years ago
Grammar

Thereby

Are a-c interchangeable and acceptable?

a. We modified the word, thereby making the sentence more descriptive.



b. If we modified the word, thereby making the sentence more descriptive, we...



c. We modified the word, by means of that making the sentence more descriptive.

And is d different in meaning, saying why we modified instead of what happened as a result of modifying?

d. If we modified the word to make the sentence more descriptive, we...





Thanks
  

Top answer

(a) and (b) are fine but can't be interchangeable since they have quite different senses (one being a conditional and the other not). To me, (c) sounds awkward or old-fashioned. I understand it to mean the same as (a).

— Mr Wordy

  • (a) and (b) are fine but can't be interchangeable since they have quite different senses (one being a conditional and the other not).
  • To me, (c) sounds awkward or old-fashioned.
  • I understand it to mean the same as (a).
  • (d) is pretty similar in meaning to (b).
  • I suppose it more explicitly says that we modified the word in order to make the sentence more descriptive, but in practice (b) implies the same thing well enough.
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1 Answers
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(a) and (b) are fine but can't be interchangeable since they have quite different senses (one being a conditional and the other not).

To me, (c) sounds awkward or old-fashioned. I understand it to mean the same as (a).

(d) is pretty similar in meaning to (b). I suppose it more explicitly says that we modified the word in order to make the sentence more descriptive, but i
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