1

Which sentence is more clear? I want to say that sales increased by three times. But it is not exactly three times, it was an increase from 15 to 47.

  1. As for selling fair-trade bananas, Switzerland, which occupied the highest position in both estimated years, witnessed about a three-times increase from 15 to 47 million euros.

  2. As for selling fair-trade bananas, Switzerland, which occupied the highest position in both estimated years, witnessed approximately a three-times increase from 15 to 47 million euros.

Improve this question
3
  • 2
    Approximately is much more suitable in this kind of formal sentence.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Dec 28, 2021 at 13:20
  • 4
    But a three-times increase is not idiomatic: we say "a three-fold increase".
    – stangdon
    Commented Dec 28, 2021 at 13:24
  • 1
    There's a bit of a "registry mismatch" here - the use of witnessed [an increase] reflects "vivid, creative, attention-grabbing" writing style (even more "poetic" than saw, which is also metaphorical), but approximately is a "dry, technical, formal, academic" usage.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Dec 28, 2021 at 13:41

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

The words "about" and "approximately" both serve the same purpose in this sentence, but "approximately" is slightly better, for a few reasons (one of those reasons being that "about" can mean far more other things which you don't intend here).

Also, there is a comment saying that you should say "three-fold" instead of "three-times", but if we're heading in that direction, I'll take it one step further and say that a better way to word this would be to say "an increase by a factor of three" instead of "three-fold" or "three-times" which are slightly more awkward. This would work with the word "approximately" in both of the following ways: "an increase by approximately a factor of three" and "an increase by a factor of approximately three".

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .