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I'm writing up specs for a website with learning materials for our alpha testers to comment on. Among others, I'm describing the rating system: the materials can be rated (...) several criteria (such as usefulness, quality), e.g. by giving 3 stars for usefulness and 5 for quality.

Is "according to" the only proper way to link "rate" and "criteria" in this case? Can we rate by quality? rate on quality? 'rate in quality'?

I would usually just say 'rate the quality', without a preposition or anything, but I can't really use that in a passive sentence about the materials, and I know that even if I change this specific sentence into an active one, I'll need the passive at some point as well...

(please note that I mean the act of rating (ie. giving stars or votes or whatever), not the act of sorting things by their ratings - which is I suspect why the 'by' and 'according to' options don't sound right to me)

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  • I don't think any of those prepositions are right. Rate the quality conveys exactly what you want. And I don't see the problem with the passive:"The quality can be rated". You could also say "rate in terms of quality".
    – Terpsichore
    Commented Apr 2, 2014 at 11:26
  • What I meant by the passive was using "material" as the object: "The material can be rated ... quality". "in terms of" sounds like it might work...
    – Alicja Z
    Commented Apr 2, 2014 at 11:35
  • Oh,I see. Well, "for quality" would work too.
    – Terpsichore
    Commented Apr 2, 2014 at 11:45
  • I think in your context you are using criteria to rate, so I would use "using" to join the words; rating using the criteria.
    – Polymath
    Commented Apr 2, 2014 at 14:52

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The most obvious rewording that fixes this issue is:

The material's quality can be rated.

But if you want to keep your original form, the best preposition would be:

The material can be rated for quality.

Relevant NGram data for "rated * quality" show that "for" beats out "on" and "by" by significant margins.

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  • Thanks - didn't think of "for", it does seem to fit my needs the best.
    – Alicja Z
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 17:46

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