How Counting Syllables Can Help You Master Comparative Modifiers

Last Updated on December 9, 2019

Sometimes it amazes me how a simple little trick in grammar can make all the difference. Here’s a trick I found on dealing with comparative modifiers.

It’s the kind of mistake you’re likely to hear a child make: attempting to add -er to a modifier when it doesn’t really work. For example, a child explains why he and his sibling didn’t obey their parents about plundering through the garage like this:

Well, she was curious, but I was curiouser, so I opened the cabinet.

A child may not realize that “curiouser” isn’t a word, but I hope you do.

Over at Pennington Publishing’s blog, I found an article listing 40 grammar pet peeves, and one about comparative modifiers caught my eye because it’s based on a syllable count.

I love little tricks that simplify the wild and crazy grammar rules we’re forced to deal with in the English language. This trick doesn’t work every time, but it at least can help narrow the options.

According to their blog, count the syllables of the comparative modifier you are going to use when sizing up two or more things.

For one-syllable modifiers, you can generally add -er to the end of the modifier itself. For two-syllable modifiers, add -er unless using the word more or less in front of it sounds better.

Borrowing a portion of their example:

Incorrect: I picked the smallest piece of the two.
Correct: I picked the smaller piece of the two.

Between two things, you’d use small and smaller. Among three or more, you’d add smallest. So here, the trick works.

What if the word is more than two syllables long? Easy: More syllables means you use more in front of the word (or less as the case may be).

I immediately thought of an exception to the rule: the one syllable modifier scared. You wouldn’t say someone was “scareder” than someone else; you’d have to say “more scared.”

But hey, it’s English…there are always going to be exceptions, no matter how easy or difficult the trick turns out to be.