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"Each question has equal weight"

English Language & Usage Asked on August 31, 2021

In a question paper, there are many questions and the professor intends to say that all the questions are weighted equally. Most commonly, I have come across the following:

All questions have equal weights.

However I also came across the following recently, which sounds ungrammatical to me, but I am not sure.

Each question has equal weight.

Is the second usage also correct? Somehow I feel equal does not come across as same in this sentence.

2 Answers

Not only is your second sentence correct, it is the more commonly used.

A question has a weight, it does not have several weights.
Therefore, with multiple questions, each has a (singular) weight.
Therefore, each question may have an equal weight.

Correct answer by Chenmunka on August 31, 2021

Chenmunka's answer deals with the issue of singular weight versus plural weights. There remains the issue of equal. This refers to how the questions' respective weights relate to each other. So it is nonsense to say, of a single question, that it has equal weight. Instead, your first suggested sentence is fine, as is this one:

The questions have equal weights.

If you wanted to say something about the questions individually, then Each could work, e.g.

Each question has 10 marks.

Answered by Rosie F on August 31, 2021

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