Please check the sentences below.
1. I think the greatest negligence in these years was the loss of opportunity to develop its own line of products.
2. I think the greatest negligence in these years was its failure to develop its own line of products.
Q) Which one is better? (please explain your answer a bit).
Thanks in advance.
I like version #2 better than #1. Number one is just too wordy, with its redundant "loss of opportunity." However, I recommend re-wording #2 as follows:
I think the greatest negligence in these years was its failure to develop its own product line.
In providing a context, as JMB did, above, the American English form of the sentence would be as follows:
I think Samsung's greatest negligence in these years was its failure to develop its own product line.
In British English, the sentence would be as follows:
I think Samsung's greatest negligence in these years was their failure to develop their own product line.
[Increasingly, I like the British custom of making the name of a company, such as Samsung, a plural noun or plural pronoun, since a company or corporation, after all, consists of living people! In America, on the other hand, a company is considered an entity, an "it." In legal, contractual terms in America, a company is also considered a singular "person." Occasionally, however, the pronoun whose can substitute for a company's name, such as in "IBM, whose third-quarter earnings rose 26 percent last year, seems to be on the ascendancy."]
