Question: “More and more I am hearing people use ‘more’ rather than using the ‘-er’ at the end of words. Is this the current grammar usage? Example: ‘The weather is more hot than it has been lately.’ I was taught to use ‘-er.’ ‘The weather is hotter than it has been lately.’ I am confused. Can you help?” – Dee Ann Reed

Answer: I touched on comparative and superlative forms in a previous column, but since this does seem to be a pernicious error I think we can tackle it again.

To recap quickly: The comparative form is used to compare two people or things (“My go-cart is faster than yours.”). The superlative form is used to compare three or more people or things (“Tom’s go-cart is the fastest of the bunch.”).

Typicallypeople don’t have trouble determining whether they need to use the comparative or superlative form. Rather, what trips people up is whether to use an accessory word like “more” or “most” or a suffix like “-er” or “-est.” Fortunately, there is a rule for this.

When comparing items with a single-syllable word, use “-er” or “-est.” When comparing items with a multiple-syllable word, use “more” or “less.” The exception is two-syllable words ending in “-y,” “-ow” or “-le,” which get treated as single-syllable words.

In your example above, we would say the weather is “hotter” than it has been lately. Why? Because “hot” is a single syllable word. What if the weather has been especially humid, though? We would say it has been “more humid,” since “humid” is a multi-syllable word not ending in “-y,” “-ow” or “-le.” If it has been especially cloudy? Then it’s been “cloudier,” because, though “cloudy” is a multi-syllable word, it gets single-syllable treatment since it ends in “-y.”

This is one of the nicer grammar rules with only a single, consistent set of exceptions. Learn the basic rules, learn the three prefixes which get single-syllable treatment, and you should have no problems forming the proper comparative and superlative forms.