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Between the following two sentences which one, if any, is correct and idiomatic?

All of these options are/sound/look interesting to me, however among the choices I prefer the most to do X.

All of these options are/sound/look interesting to me, however among the choices I prefer mostly to do X.

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4 Answers 4

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In US English, there's really no good idiom but a casual way of expressing that in speech might be,

For activities:

They all sound good, but I'd rather X.

For things:

They all look good, but I like that one -or- X

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  • "I'd rather" sounds great.
    – Mohsen Kamrani
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 5:35
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"mostly" means mainly, generally or in most cases as in

  • We're mostly out on Sundays. OALD

As an adverb after a verb meaning to the highest degree or in the first place of your favour you can use "the most" or "most" as in

  • What did you enjoy the most/most. OALD

OALD's comment: "the" is often left out in informal English.

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As you are asking for idiomatic:

Just stick with "prefer". This already states what you want to do most. Skip the "however" as it indicates a contradiction.

All of these options sound interesting to me, among the choices I prefer to do X.

You could also drop the "to me", as it's clearly you making the statement and "among the choices" is implied unless X is not in the original set of options. Your sentence then can be reduced to:

All of these options sound interesting, I prefer to do X.

However, if X is not in the original set of options, the "however" remains to indicate that you will do something different.

All of these options sound interesting, however, I prefer to do X.

If you really, really want to use "most", it goes to the end:

All of these options sound interesting, among the choices I prefer to do X the most.

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  • Thanks for your answer. I should mention that I use "however" to put more stress on my choice. I mean, all the options are desirable, however one of them is more desired.
    – Mohsen Kamrani
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 8:01
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I'd first change the structure of the sentence to:

All of these look/sound/are interesting, however, I prefer to do X the most.

All of these look/sound/are interesting, however, I mostly prefer to do X.

Now if you look at these sentences, both are correct and could be used interchangeably.

Idiomatically, the second sentence would be more commonly used, nevertheless the first one is also used commonly, albeit less frequently than the first one.

There are other statements which would be much more common, such as:

All of these look/sound/are good, but I'd rather do X. casual

All of these look/sound/are good, but I prefer doing X. formal

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