Here’s a frustrated sentence to ponder:

The party on Saturday was smaller and very different from the party on Friday.

“Smaller” is a comparative adjective. In the sentence above, it is trying to compare Saturday’s party to Friday’s party–but it’s failing. The problem is that “than,” the subordinate conjunction that’s used after comparative adjectives, is missing.

When corrected, the sentence reads like this:

The party on Saturday was smaller than, and very different from, the party on Friday.

Notice that I used two commas to set off “and very different from.”

By the way, adjectives have three degrees of comparision: the positive {small}, the comparative {smaller), and the superlative {smallest}.

Cheers,

Tara Treasurefield

Treasurefield Communications