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Is it commonly considered erroneous to place "much" after "and", when talking about myself?


My phrasing:

well experienced with content management systems, and much interested in E-commerce.

Commentators phrasing:

well experienced with content management systems, and very interested in E-commerce.

I am not sure who's more accurate than both of us, in regards to what's common and accepted in English.

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  • In my view, "much" works better here than "very" but at the same time, how is that not purely a personal style choice, please? Commented Mar 31, 2018 at 17:30

2 Answers 2

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It's nothing to do with whether it is about yourself, or after and.

Much is not generally used with a positive adjective (i.e. one that is not comparative) in a positive context. So if I search for "-not much -j*" (that is, a word which is not not, followed by much, followed by an adjective), in both the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English, almost all the instances are with a comparative adjective.

It is used in a negative context ("not much"), and with comparative adjectives ("much easier"). There is also an idiomatic use of very much, in the sense definitely: a common example is "very much aware".

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Let's break down the grammar of this sentence, "interested" is an adjective. So, "much" or "very" should be used as an adverb. Very is a flexible adverb, it can be used to compliment an adjective, adverb, or a noun. But, much is somewhat restrictive and is used to mainly to modify comparative adjectives.

Consider the two phrases "very big" and "much bigger" try to swap the places of "very" and "much". Very sounds better in a standalone statement and much sounds better in a comparison.

Much is the preferred choice if your sentence were "I'm much interested in E-commerce over Brick and mortar." BTW, your sentence would be much more accurate if it were,

Well experienced in content management systems, and very interested in E-commerce.

"In" instead of "with". You mostly work in a CMS not work with it.

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