More VS Greater

[NourA789]

Hi
According to Ch 4 modifiers in Verbal, Great is used for uncountable nouns Vs more applies to both countable and uncountable nouns. it was also stated that with units such as gallons and dollars, since they represent money and volume which are not countable, so we should use "five dollars less" instead of "5 dollars fewer" and similarly "6 gallons less" instead of '6 gallons fewer".
1- What's the case when we want to express the opposite? what is the right selection for GMAT? "3 dollars more" or "3 dollars greater"?
2- What about gallons, what is correct for GMAT? "3 gallons more" or "3 gallons greater"?
3- if we take other examples of volume such as m3. What's correct for GMAT? "30 m3 more" or "30 m3 greater"?
4- what if we use the original noun of that unit as in money .. what is correct for GMAT? "more money" or "greater money"?
5- what if we use the original noun of that unit as in volume .. what is correct for GMAT? "more volume" or "greater volume"?

Thanks
Nour

[StaceyKoprince]

Good questions!

As you're mentioning, there are some weird exceptions related to money and volume. The GMAT doesn't typically test these specific usage cases unless it's really crystal clear what the right usage should be, so I wouldn't stress about this too much for the GMAT, but it can be useful to know for your own writing.

Technically, dollars are countable (one dollar, two dollars, three dollars), while money is not (one money, two moneys, three moneys...? Nope).
Technically, gallons are countable (one gallon, two gallons, three gallons), while the item you have gallons of, eg gallons of water, is not (one water, two waters, three waters? Nope). And the word volume is not countable (one volume, two volumes, three volumes...) unless you are referring to the volume of multiple separate shapes (like, I have three spheres, and each one has its own volume...but the GMAT won't do this).

These are all correct:
You have a greater number (countable) of dollars than I do.
You have more money (non-countable) than I do.
You have more dollars than I do. (This is the exception from the "official" rules, but it's acceptable because it's really shorthand for: You have more money than I do.)

These are all correct:
You have a greater number (countable) of gallons of water than I do.
You have more water (non-countable) than I do.
You have more gallons of water than I do. (Again, this is really shorthand for: You have more water than I do.)

This pond has a greater number of cubic meters of water than that pond does. (Shorthand: The focus is on the number.)
This pond has 30 cubic meters more water than that pond does. (Shorthand: This pond has more water than that one.)
This pond has more cubic meters of water than that pond does. (Shorthand: This pond has more water than that one.)

In the cases above, if you specify "number of" for the item (dollars, water), then the real focus is on the word number, which is countable—so then you do use the "countable" modifier (in this case, greater).

But if you don't specify that you are talking about the "number," then it's part of the exception to the standard rules. Consider it part of the broader category (you're talking about money or volume in general) and use the "non-countable" modifier (in this case, more).

Note that the following structure is different—always use "more" in these cases:
You have 4 dollars more than I do.
You have 3 gallons more than I do.
You have 3 cats more than I do. (Cats are definitely countable...but you still use "more.")
You have 3 square meters more tiling than I do.
You have 3 cubic meters more bricks than I do.

With that structure, there's no setup where you could correctly say, "I have 3 <anythings> greater than you do." That one is always "more." (I've never seen them test this specific structure on the GMAT.)

In general, these exceptions are weird enough that I haven't seen them tested a ton (if at all?) in the last 10 years on the GMAT. They're trying to get away from having a "language penalty" for people who speak something other than English as their first language, and this is the kind of thing where there would likely be too big of a difference in performance just based on whether English was someone's first or second (or more!) language.

So I wouldn't worry about it too much for the GMAT, but hopefully that's useful for your own real-world writing!

[StaceyKoprince]

[Edited to add: The below was in response to a spammer who posted a normal comment, and then edited the response to spam after I responded. Yes, we check and, yes, we will find and delete your edited-to-spam post and ban you. So please don't waste your own time or ours! ]

You're welcome! Good luck with your studies!

[StaceyKoprince]

You're welcome! Yes, it's hard to keep up with the spammers. That's why we unfortunately had to lock all of the other folders in our forums so that only our paid-product students can post—otherwise, we couldn't delete all of the spam fast enough.

But at least our free-product students can still read everything in all of the folders!

[StaceyKoprince]

Love it. This time, the spammer tried to engage with me in a couple of posts (while pretending not to be a spammer). And then later changed the post to spam. And then deleted their account so that I couldn't do a mass-ban and delete their posts.

Guess what? All of your posts are now deleted. (Do you really think you can slip by people whose job it is to score in the 99th percentile on every standardized test we've ever taken??)

<gandalf> YOU SHALL NOT PASS. </gandalf>

(Hope everyone else reading this enjoys it. )