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Sat 26 May, 2018 07:41 am
Me and my friends are practicing writing in English on a regular basis.
Each week, we are given three topics to write about,
and the topics given this week are as follows.
1. What I hate to do
2. What I want to be in the future
3. The person you look up to
One of us said,
"I will write No. 1", which means he's gonna write an essay about 'what I hate do to'
Upon looking at what he said, I wondered,
if it's common to say 'write something'.
Well, my guess was that he should've said,
"I will write about No.1"
I entered both 'write something' and 'write about something' in Google, and the former showed 13,200,000 hits while the latter , 2,490,000 hits.
Well, surprisingly though, the google search result is opposite to what I thought to be right. The latter has more instances, google showed. I'm a bit shocked.
Well, I can't help but ask you guys, native speakers then.
Which is more natural,
'write something' and 'write about something'?
Don't you usually say 'write about something'?
I'd appreciate any comment from you.
Thank you.
@SMickey,
I've been known to use both versions.
"I will write about the homeless." - I would use this when not having a list of topics; or, a list without numbers.
"I will write number 1." - I might use this, especially if I were being lazy. The problem which exists for this example; is, it literally indicates a person will just be writing the number 1, again and again. Since there was a group of you, all of whom knew the topic list, it was mildly acceptable for spoken language usage; however, it may be grammatically incorrect.
Instead of saying
I will write number 1., it would be better to have said,
I will select number 1.
Since you have provided a list of subjects, I would say:
I’ll write on number 1.
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