So I wrote, "27% of the world's forest is in Africa," to imply that Africa's forest area constitutes 27% of the world's forest area. However, a native speaker suggested that I use forests instead of forest because the world's forest would imply that there's only one forest in the world. But if I write it that way, I find it misleading because it sounds like I'm talking about 27% of the total number of different forests in the world, not the area. Since forest is also an uncountable noun, I feel like using the singular form to refer to its area is better. What do you think?
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2I would agree with you. Another alternative is to use forested area.– PeterCommented Dec 16, 2023 at 4:53
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1@Peter That's better, but even that could mean that the world has only one single forested area. At some point, we have to trust the reader to parse it the natural way.– gotube ♦Commented Dec 16, 2023 at 6:56
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What about forest cover? Do you think it's synonymous with forest area?– An IELTS LearnerCommented Dec 16, 2023 at 7:58
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And forest land too. OMG, I'm so frustrated. I'm writing an essay and have to talk about the same word over and over again, like every single sentence. It can't be good to just say forest(ed) area repeatedly, but avoiding it is such a tall order for me, to say the least. If only my mother tongue were an international language.– An IELTS LearnerCommented Dec 16, 2023 at 8:43
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1 Answer
While your sentence could be naively parsed to mean that the world only has one forest, this is not the natural way to parse it.
Merriam-Webster gives these usage examples which show "forest" can be countable to mean a single forested area, or uncountable to mean forested area in general:
1 : a dense growth of trees and underbrush covering a large tract
A fire destroyed acres of forest. (uncountable)
forests of pine and mahogany (countable)
Anybody reading your version would correctly understand that "forest" is used in the uncountable sense.
Aside: While native speakers are great at spotting mistakes, they're often too keen to help and see mistakes that aren't really mistakes. If that native speaker wasn't looking for errors, or didn't know that sentence had been written by a non-native speaker, I doubt they would have found anything wrong with it.