Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[nawee]

Hello,

I have seen "be more strict in enforcing...". Shouldn't it be "be stricter"?

And what other prepositions can we use?

Thank you,

Nawee

[Anuradha Chepur]

In degrees of comparison, usually monosyllabic adjectives take the -er/ier and -est/iest suffixes, and adjectives which are longer than a syllable are preceeded by 'more, and 'most'.

Strictly speaking, 'strict' is a monosyllabic word, so the natural comparitive form should be 'stricter'.

But not many are aware of this, and they end up using more/most even for monosyllabic adjectives and this is not considered a gross error. Hence, 'more strict' is acceptable.