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Please correct the following sentence:
1) “I like both tea and coffee, but I drink more tea than coffee.”
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Here’s the correct version:
2) “I like both tea and coffee, but I drink more tea than I drink coffee.”
or, even better:
3) “I like both tea and coffee, but I drink more tea than I do coffee.”
This is what I call a COMPARISON problem. If you prefer, you can think of it as an APPLES AND ORANGES type problem.
You know the old saying: “you can’t compare apples and oranges?” What this means is that you cannot compare two inherently different things, even if the construction makes it obvious to you what is being said. For example, if you take the original sentence literally, it means that “you drink far more tea than coffee drinks tea.”
The COMPARISON RULE tells us that this phrasing is incorrect. You must compare how much tea you DRINK to how much coffee you DRINK.
Another example would be this:
1) “The players on my team are better than your team.”
should be changed to:
2) “The players on my team are better than the players on your team.”
or, even better:
3) “The players on my team are better than those on your team.”
This is because you must compare PLAYERS to other PLAYERS, instead of comparing the PLAYERS to a TEAM.
Sure, it seems unnecessary, and people rarely speak like this, but it’s still technically an error, and the SAT Writing section tests this error quite frequently.
So here’s my main tip: IF YOU EVER SPOT A COMPARISON SENTENCE ON THE SAT WRITING (tip: keep an eye out for the word “THAN,” which is a huge giveaway), chances are that the error tested is a COMPARISON ERROR.
-Brian
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