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He counted money wrongly more than the amount I gave.

In the sentence above what I tried to say is that I gave someone fifty one hundred dollars bills, but he counted them as 52 bills instead as a result of the situation. Is the sentence above correct?

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  • I also wonder. I guess native speakers will say he counted more than the money I gave.
    – Gate Pending
    Sep 16, 2021 at 9:55
  • Proof-reading is off-topic - but the total he reached was more than the amount you had given him.
    – Kate Bunting
    Sep 16, 2021 at 10:04
  • Or 'the amount he counted was more than I gave him', or 'he counted more bills/money than I gave him'.
    – Mark Ripley
    Sep 16, 2021 at 13:46
  • [correction: Is the meaning of the sentence below correct?]
    – Lambie
    Sep 16, 2021 at 14:17
  • I think that adverbs that don't function in a regular manner deserve special consideration. This is one of them.
    – Lambie
    Sep 21, 2021 at 22:22

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He counted money wrongly more than the amount I gave.

is semantically incorrect:

He counted the money incorrectly or inaccurately. It was more than the amount I gave him.

wrongly is not used in the same way as incorrectly or inaccurately.

Numbers are said to be incorrect (not correct) or inaccurate (not accurate).

The adverb wrongly is used with verbs such as think or believe:
He wrongly thought she left the door open.
Or: They wrongly believed the Caprivi Strip was in South Africa.

The adjective wrong is used as a regular adjective:
His answer was wrong.
That is the wrong answer.

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  • So if I say “He counted the money incorrectly more than the amount I gave” would it give the meaning I tried to say.
    – user128764
    Sep 16, 2021 at 15:38
  • @languagelearner Please do not make me repeat myself. No, it is not correct. This would be: He counted the money as more than I gave him.
    – Lambie
    Sep 16, 2021 at 17:49
  • "wrong" is also an adverb, which causes a lot of confusion. "Hey! you counted that wrong. We agreed on 30 chickens, not 28."
    – ColleenV
    Sep 22, 2021 at 17:53
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    @ColleenV Thanks, you are right [ha ha.].
    – Lambie
    Sep 22, 2021 at 19:27
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No, this is not correct. The closest correct sentence you can make from this is:

He incorrectly counted more money than I actually gave him.

"Wrongly" and "incorrectly" are often synonymous, but not always, and not in this case.

  • "He incorrectly counted" means that he made a mistake in his count.
  • "He wrongly counted" means that he made a mistake by counting the money. The counting itself was the mistake. He shouldn't have counted it.

That being said, because of the continuation of the sentence, most people will understand what you mean if you had used "wrongly".

I removed "the amount" because it's unnecessary and a bit stilted, money is inherently understood to express an amount, especially if you're already quantifying the amount of money use by using "more".

"Actually" doesn't have to be in the sentence, but it is idiomatic here. It's used to further stress that there is a difference between the real amount and the mistaken amount.

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