<p>Writing question:</p>
<p>Television's programming difficulties, [already made acute by rising costs, threatens] to become even more severe as a result of lobbying by special- interest groups. </p>
<p>A) same
B) already made acute by rising costs, threaten
C) already made acuter by rising costs, threaten</p>
<p>Why is choice B the correct one? Why isn't it choice C?</p>
<p>which brings me to my next question, how can you distinguish from a phony or real superlative?</p>
<p>The answer is (B) for mainly 3 reasons, and you see to have one of them understood:</p>
<ol>
<li>difficulties imply threaten, not threatens; you got that part</li>
<li>“acuter” implies it was already “acute” at one point in the past, but this wasn’t stated nor is it implied only in the end of the sentence. Sorry if I’m hard to understand, explaining things in text is hard for me.</li>
<li>Usually it’s more proper to say “more acute”</li>
</ol>
<p>yes thank you so much!!
and how do you know that it is more proper to say “more acute”?? is it just an ear thing? not really a logical explanation you could explain?</p>
<p>There are rules that can help you decide whether the superlative is “more/most xxx” or “xxxer/xxxest”.</p>
<p>When the adjective is multi-syllable then “more/most” is often required. This is “always” the case for adjectives of 3 or more syllables, and “often” the case for 2-syllable adjectives. When in doubt with 2-syllable adjectives you can use more/most with high assurance that this is correct. I’ve put “always” and “often” in quotes because there may be exceptions of which I’m unware.</p>
<p>You have to look at the context. Nowhere in the sentence does it give you the idea that the programming difficulties had previously been acute. And also, “acuter” is grammatically incorrect so you can quickly cross that off of your list of options.</p>