Grammar

smndly

What do you think the following means: "60% of those in groups A and B voted in favour of the motion"?

Does this mean that 60% of the combination of the people in A and B voted in favour or does it mean that 60% of group A and 60% of group B voted in favour?

I think the meaning would also be different if the word "group" was used instead of "groups".

Bloody Grammar!

pickarooney

Moved from Creative Writing to English

pickarooney

Is there any more context? Are there any other groups for example? I'd be inclined to say it meant 60% of A and 60% of B although if the groups are of equal size it would amount to the same thing.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

pickarooney

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

That's not really any less ambiguous to me. You'd need to use 'each' or 'across'.

looksee

Doesn't it come to the same thing anyway?

asper

"60% of those in groups A and B voted in favour of the motion"?

Unless otherwise indicated , "60% of" is of the single subject following it. Here that would be "of those in groups A and B".

The only other possibility is two individual subjects; those being "60% of those in groups A" and "B" (grammatically incorrect)

Unless of course the sentence is of political or marketing origin, in which case all bets are off

BASHIR

pickarooney wrote: »

Is there any more context? Are there any other groups for example? I'd be inclined to say it meant 60% of A and 60% of B although if the groups are of equal size it would amount to the same thing.

I would agree, also the groups don't have to be the same size.
group A (20) 60% = 12
group b (30) 60% = 18
Total= 30

group A+b 50 60% =30

I know it's not the maths forum but thought it might help.

Unregistered.

BASHIR wrote: »

I would agree, also the groups don't have to be the same size.
group A (20) 60% = 12
group b (30) 60% = 18
Total= 30

group A+b 50 60% =30

I know it's not the maths forum but thought it might help.

Aye. 0/20 from group A and 30/30 from group B is still 60% across the two groups.

MathsManiac

Since somebody mentioned maths, I'll lob in another perspective.

The OP mentions two possible interpretations, but there is another (dare I say, more literally logical) interpretation:

"Of those people who are in group A and are also in group B, 60% voted in favour of the motion."

That is, if I belong to both groups, then I am one of the people that this statement is about; if I belong to group A only, or group B only, or neither group, then I am not one of the people that this statement is about.

That is how the sentence would be interpreted in a mathematical context, I believe.

For example, if Group A consists of all of the women involved, and Group B consists of all the tall people involved, then we are being told that 60% of the tall women voted in favour of the motion.

I realise, of course, that this is not how most people would interpret the statement in other contexts. However, it does illustrate that sentences sometimes don't mean what logic dictates they should mean!