1. A DHS report estimates that over 40% of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. since 2004 have traveled through the Mona Pass.
2. Between 2004 and 2010, more than 4 in 10 illegal immigrants traveled through the Mona Pass.
Leave your answer and explanation in the comments section.
Which Sentence Is Better?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Number 2:
ReplyDelete1. By reading the adverbial phrase first ("Between 2004 and 2010"), readers gain a temporal context.
2. The grammatical and semantic subject (immigrants) is placed in the main clause, not in an indirect clause ("that...")
3. When they get to "more than 4 in 10," readers immediately know they're about to read a count noun (like "apples"), not a "mass noun (like "applesauce").
4. "more than 4 in 10 illegal immigrants" personalizes this very personal statistic. For this reason, it would have been ideal to use the singular. But that would require less precision ("more than 1 illegal immigrant of every 3") or a compound ratio ("more than 1 in 2.5 illegal immigrants").