Comparisons

See a video about comparisons 

Comparison: adjectives

Comparative adjectives

Comparative adjectives compare one person or thing with another and enable us to say whether a person or thing has more or less of a particular quality:

Josh is taller than his sister.

I’m more interested in music than sport.

Big cars that use a lot of petrol are less popular now than twenty years ago.

Grammatical constructions used for comparing adjectives

There are three forms of comparison:

• positive
• comparative
• superlative

1. Comparison with -er/-est

clean → cleaner → (the) cleanest

We use -er/-est with the following adjectives:

1.1. Adjectives with one syllable

positive	comparative	superlative
clean	cleaner	cleanest
new	newer	newest
cheap	cheaper	cheapest

Comparison: nouns

More, less and fewer

We can use more, less and fewer with noun phrases to create comparisons which are similar to the comparative forms of adjectives and adverbs:

There was more snow this year than last year.

She has more problems than most people.

You should eat less junk food and start to take better care of your health.

There are fewer birds in the countryside now than there were 30 years ago.

Traditionally, we use less with uncountable nouns and fewer with plural countable nouns. Nowadays, many people use less with plural countable nouns. Some people consider this to be incorrect, and prefer to use fewer:

I think the room would look better with less furniture. (less + singular uncountable noun)

There were fewer cars on the roads twenty years ago. (fewer + plural countable noun; traditional correct form)

Less kids take music lessons now than before. (less + plural countable noun; considered incorrect by some people)

Exercise 1:  comparison of adjectives in sentences
Exercise 2:  comparison of adjectives with as ... as
Exercise 3: comparative Adjectives