Are my sentences acceptable?

Forums: English, Esl, Grammar
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- How much money is needed to make the completion of our project more likely than not?

- It seems less likely than not that he will arrive on time.

- It is more likely than not to be raining tomorrow morning.

I just made these sentences out of my poor understanding of English, not sure whether they are sound, could someone tell me?

Are they sound sentences, and can 'more/less likely than not' be used that way?

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Type: Question • Score: 4 • Views: 715 • Replies: 9

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@imsak,

Quote:

- It seems less likely than not that he will arrive on time.

This one seems an odd collocation, Imsak. Perhaps with the right context it would work. The other two are fine.

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@imsak,

Firstly, there's nothing wrong with them grammatically. However, if you were having a conversation, you might say them a little more simply.

Quote:

- How much money is needed to make the completion of our project more likely than not?

- It seems less likely than not that he will arrive on time.

- It is more likely than not to be raining tomorrow morning.

************************************************************
I would say (or write) them more simply this way:

"How much money is needed to make the completion of our project more than (or most) likely?"

"Most than likely he will arrive on time."

"It's likely (or more than likely) to be raining tomorrow morning."

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@Ragman,

Quote:

"Most than likely he will arrive on time."

Ragman made a wee slip up on this one. He doesn't really think MOST is possible.

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@imsak,

I beg your pardon, I hurried and made a typo.
My suggested phrase should be the following:

"More than likely he will arrive on time."

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@imsak,

I'd agree with JTT. However the third,

Quote:

- It is more likely than not to be raining tomorrow morning.

...also bothers me somehow. Dunno zactly why

1 Reply

Thanks to all comments.

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@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

"It is more likely than not to be raining tomorrow morning"....also bothers me somehow. Dunno zactly why

It 's fine. If something is more likely to happen than not, then the probability of it happening is greater than the probability of it not happening. Perfectly normal everyday expression.

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@imsak,

Quote:

Thanks to all comments.

Thanks to everyone for the comments.

Thanks FOR all THE comments.

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@contrex,

Quote:

Perfectly normal everyday expression.

Of course Con you're absolutely right, esp as spoken. But if a sentence can be misread I will misread it, regardless of its grammatical accuracy. Somehow I get the feeling there ought to be a comma after "not"

But like I said it's just me

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Are my sentences acceptable?

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