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I was writing an abstract of an article and started highlighting the advances in a field of knowledge, so I wrote:
"Over the last 10 years, huge advances have been done in the areas of..."
Then, when I was proofreading, I thought that I should use made instead. But searching in the internet, both forms are found.
Are they interchangeable in this context?
"Advances have been done" sounds quite wrong to me. A check on google ngram viewer shows "advances have been made" is about 1000 times more common (if I've counted the zeros correctly).
It's possible that it's a regional variant, I suppose.
Since "advances" in that context means to "make progress", or "make improvements", so I'll stick with make. Also, yeah, do sounds wrong.
As a side node, I went down the rabbit hole of "advances" vs "advancements", and it seems that advances is more used. Google Ngram
