Wednesday, February 24, 2016

grammar - What's wrong with "We hope you will find our Qualifications to be well-organized, concise, and most of all, to exceed your expectations."



Why is the following sentence grammatically incorrect?




We hope you will find our Qualifications to be well-organized, concise, and most of all, to exceed your expectations.





I've asked three grammar whiz friends and they have all told me "it just isn't right." I need reasons and rules! I wrote this sentence as a closing to a cover letter....


Answer



If you delete the most of all and rewrite it as a bulletted list, the problem becomes clear:




We hope you will find our Qualifications to be:





  • well-organized

  • concise

  • to exceed your expectations




Your sentence treats well-organized, concise and to exceed your expectations as being in the same grammatical category. well-organized and concise are adjectives, but to exceed your expectations is an infinitive. to be to exceed your expectations is just wrong.



It was harder to spot before, because the most of all confused matters.




Also, qualifications should probably not be capitalized (although that depends on context).


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