GameDevMike

Following on from the last English Tip, this one continues the theme of mistakes with countable and uncountable nouns. Today’s tip covers the words amount and number.

Consider the following sentence from someone describing an asteroids shooter:

As the levels progress, a larger amount of asteroids come at the player from all directions.

This is almost a well written sentence. Unfortunately, there is one glaring error that stands out and completely ruins it. The problem is that the word amount is supposed to be used with uncountable nouns. You cannot have an amount of asteroids because the word asteroids is countable. To correct the sentence, replace amount with number.

As the levels progress, a larger [number] of asteroids come at the player from all directions.

This mistake is very common. Native English speakers should not be making such a mistake at all, yet they do often enough that non-native speakers easily become confused. If you want your writing to appear more professional, be sure that you are using number with countable nouns and amount with uncountable nouns. The unwashed masses usually won’t know the difference, but I assure you that a web site with such basic mistakes as those discussed in this and the previous tip will lose more than a few sales.