question of style

[vsopvs]

I wonder what one would say seeing expressions "very wonderful" and "very awful" in two unrelated works by the same well known (if not famous) writer.

Admittedly, English is not my first language, so I might be totally off the mark here.

[PeterL]

Both are fine. "Very" is an adverb modifying "awful" or "wonderful".

[JBI]

Very doesn't work actually - Wonderful cannot take a quantitative adverb like that.

[vsopvs]

Both are fine. "Very" is an adverb modifying "awful" or "wonderful".


yes, i realize that, but there are more subtle :) style issues, aren't there. bordering with taste may be...

[vsopvs]

Very doesn't work actually - Wonderful cannot take a quantitative adverb like that.


also if one says "very wonderful", one can probably say "more wonderful" - and this sounds totally wrong to my ear...

[Cayenne]

English is not my first language either so I can't really know, I guess, but "very wonderful" doesn't sound good to my ear. To me "really wonderful" and "really awful" sound better.

[vsopvs]

"really wonderful" and "really awful" sound better.

i agree. "absolutely wonderful" would work too, i guess. In fact, the author who used "very wonderful" and "very awful", Joseph Conrad, was not a native English speaker himself.

[JBI]

Very doesn't work there - Wonderful cannot take it - the closest you could get, I would argue, while sounding right is "quite wonderful". or "truly wonderful". But quantity is already implied in the suffix "ful", which creates the problem.

[vsopvs]

quantity is already implied in the suffix "ful",

interesting, i didn't know that. thank you.