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Perfect Stranger Posted 12 years ago
Vocabulary

Vocab question no. 51: category

Dear All,

Here's a screenshot taken from a Chinese online shop. After the product has been delivered, the buyer is supposed to leave some comments about the delivery and service. What's more, the buyer can evaluate the seller by giving him stars.

Is the following question correct? I don't know if the can call these categories but I can't come up with a better word.

(asking a friend) Which category should I give the seller less stars in if I the product's quality is less than satisfactory?

Thanks
  

Top answer

I think you forgot to link to the screenshot? As far as I can tell, "category" would be OK, assuming that you give stars in a number of different categories. You have a typo: spurious "I" after "if".

— GPY

  • I think you forgot to link to the screenshot?
  • As far as I can tell, "category" would be OK, assuming that you give stars in a number of different categories.
  • You have a typo: spurious "I" after "if".
  • Strictly it should be "fewer stars".
  • The sentence is acceptable but is not the most elegant English ever written.
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8 Answers
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I think you forgot to link to the screenshot? As far as I can tell, "category" would be OK, assuming that you give stars in a number of different categories.

You have a typo: spurious "I" after "if".

Strictly it should be "fewer stars".

The sentence is acceptable but is not the most elegant English ever written. The distance between "Which ... in" is rather large. More f
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Perfect StrangerWhich category should I give the seller less stars in if I the product's quality is less than satisfactory?
Your question boils down to this: Which category relates to product quality?

Nothing in your statement says that you are going to give fewer stars in any particular category. It's all framed in terms of hypotheticals (
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CalifJimNothing in your statement says that you are going to give fewer stars in any particular category.
It seems clear enough to me that this is the speaker's intention.
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GPYIt seems clear enough to me that this is the speaker's intention.
By intuition or inference, but the answer to the question remains the same if you ask

Which category should I give the seller more stars in if the product's quality is more than satisfactory?

because the answer is the name of the category. That was my point. Nothing
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Well, I guess, but the other part explains why the speaker wants to know. It doesn't seem very strange to me that the speaker should provide this information to his or her friend.
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Perfect StrangerI didn't attach it last night
It's just as well you didn't. There are few of us here who can read Chinese.

CJ
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CalifJimIt's just as well you didn't. There are few of us here who can read Chinese.
I can't read all of them... I can read just a few of those characters, but it doesn't really matter.

We've got 5 categories here, let's say they are:

1) Delivery
2) Product quality
3) Product description
4) Customer service
5) Price

I
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