I would like to say a company is sizable.
Which expression is correct between a company with a volume and a company with volume?
P.S.
Is the sentence "a company is sizable" also grammatically acceptable?
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3'A company with (a) volume' does not sound idiomatic or natural to me, a native speaker of American English. Is there a reason you do not want to say 'a sizeable company'? – Alan Carmack Sep 29 '16 at 18:54
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2We do use the expression a sizeable company (864 hits in Google Books), but despite 13 hits for a voluminous company I don't find that remotely acceptable (except in contexts like a voluminous company policy book). – FumbleFingers Reinstate Monica Sep 29 '16 at 19:32
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@FumbleFingers Wow, thanks for your research! Where did you get the outcome from? Did you just type in the words with quotation marks at Google Books? Is there a way to find word usage statistics at different times? – sawa Sep 29 '16 at 19:43
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1You can set date ranges in Google Books. Or use NGrams like this to see how voluminous hair, for example, has become much more common over recent decades (on account of everyone wants it, and shampoo manufacturers are always trying to flog it, I dunno). – FumbleFingers Reinstate Monica Sep 29 '16 at 22:03
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btw - you'll sometimes hear that someone has big hair, but I never heard of anyone having sizeable hair! – FumbleFingers Reinstate Monica Sep 29 '16 at 22:06
Your expression
a company with volume
might be understood to possibly mean a "loud" company. "Volume" itself is not usually used to measure the "size" of a company. However, it can be used to measure the "throughput" of a company
The business model for grocery stores is to have razor thin margins but very high volume.
It would be best to directly say
The company is sizeable.
It is a sizeable company.
to mean "it is a large company".
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I know this has to do with different grammatical rule but is the sentence "a company is sizable" also grammatically acceptable? When we say a company, doesn't that signify companies at general not a specific one? Since the word company itself does not have connotation of it being a large company, isn't "a company is sizable" wrong? – sawa Sep 29 '16 at 19:29
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"A company is sizeable" is understandable and correct, but the usual phrasing would be "It is a sizeable company" which literally means "it is a big company". – Peter Sep 30 '16 at 18:32
The word volume means a quantity or amount.
A company with (a) volume = A company with (a) quantity or (an) amount. So the sentence is unidiomatic and meaningless.
As for the sentence A company is sizeable, it's correct grammatically - sizeable means fairly large. Here, you are talking about companies in general; it means all companies are fairly large.
If you are referring to a specific company, you should use "the" with company as follows:
The company is sizeable.
The company has a large/sizeable volume of business.
