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This is a main difference between the personality of good people and bad people.

Is the sentence comparing personality of good people and personality of bad people? or comparing personality of good people and bad people?

How to avoid ambiguity when using of with compound nouns?

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  • Your sentence is not grammatical. You have lost a determiner, probably a definite article. But I rather don’t think the two sorts of putative people share the same one.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 4:04
  • I added a the. Is it making sense now?
    – zx_wing
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 4:08
  • Yes, much better! I realize that articles are hard for people not used to using them. I hope you took no offence, for I assure you that none was meant.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 5:03
  • @tchrist absolutely no offence, thanks for correcting me. As you have noticed, articles usually confuse non native speakers like me for when to or not to use them. Actually I just googled their usage :)
    – zx_wing
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 6:05

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As I understand it, your question about the sentence

This is a main difference between the personality of good people and bad people.

involves determining whether "the personality of good people" is being contrasted with "bad people" or with "[the personality of] bad people." Structurally the sentence permits (with a little logical fudging) either reading, though I suspect that the author intends the second one.

That being the case, the biggest weakness of the sentence as written is that it seems to favor a logical reading that finds the intended contrast to be between "the personality of good people" (where "personality" is obviously a singular noun) on the one hand and "bad people" on the other. We can start to overcome that problem by changing personality to personalities:

This is a main difference between the personalities of good people and bad people.

At this point, we still have (from a strictly logical reading of the sentence) a contrast between "the personalities of good people" on the one hand and "bad people" on the other. But beyond that, we have a plausible set of parallels attaching to the stem word of: "good people" and "bad people." And whereas before that of linked problematically to a singular personality, it now links to the plural personalities—a better platform for the parallelism. And we can strengthen the parallelism of these phrases by adding the word of before "bad people":

This is a main difference between the personalities of good people and of bad people.

Now the parallel phrases "of good people" and "of bad people" attach to the stem word personalities—and a reader cannot logically misread the intended contrast as being between "the personalities of good people" on the one hand and "bad people" on the other, without ignoring the of immediately preceding "bad people."

As other answerers and commenters have pointed out, there are alternative ways to make the sentence unambiguously present a contrast between the two types of personalities. For example, you could say

This is a main difference between the personality of good people and the personality of bad people.

But the shorter form that I suggest is every bit as clearly parallel and yet (to my mind) somewhat less tedious.

Conversely, if you wanted to establish a contrast between "bad people" on the one hand and "the personality of good people" on the other, the simplest way to proceed would be to flip their order in your original sentence:

This is a main difference between bad people and the personality of good people.

Either way the things that the sentence is seeking to compare are clearly defined, and readers won't be tempted to misread the writer's meaning.

As a side note, I acknowledge that the form "the personalities of good people and of bad people" may suggest to some readers that the author is comparing multiple personalities of good people to multiple personalities of bad people, whereas the original wording seems to take the view that good people have one unitary personality and people a very different unitary personality. If this change runs afoul of the author's intentions, we could revise the wording (again) to say something like this:

This is a main difference between the personality of good people and that of bad people.

where the new parallels are "the personality of good people" and "that of bad people," both attached to the stem word between.

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Here's a way to recast the sentence to avoid the problem of pairing a singular personality with plural people--and two different types of plural people at that:

This is a main difference between the personality of a good person and that of a bad person.

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  • Thanks. So the expression of noun of noun and noun will definitely cause ambiguity?
    – zx_wing
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 4:29
  • It doesn't cause ambiguity in the noun before of actually does belong to both of whatever the two nouns after of refer to. For example, "the children of Bob and Sarah Jones" is perfectly all right.
    – Gary Clay Rector
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 4:43
  • Why can't I interpret the sentence to the children of Bob and Sarah Jones who is another irrelevant person to Bob?
    – zx_wing
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 4:47
  • It's unlikely that your listener would interpret the phrase that way. If you want it to mean that Bob and Sarah Jones are not a married couple be two unrelated people, you'd best avoid the danger of misinterpretation by saying "Bob's children and Sarah Jones's children."
    – Gary Clay Rector
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 4:52
  • You can also keep your plural and still use @GaryClayRector's elegant suggestion by saying "This is a main difference between the personalities of good people and those of bad people."
    – wys1wyg
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 5:17
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I gave Sven a +1; I won't repeat his commentary, but here are a couple of other options:

Singular: This is a main difference between the personality of a good person compared to that of a bad one.

Plural: This is a main difference between the personalities of good people and bad people.

Although, I might still go with the least awkward but most verbose: This is a main difference between the personalities of good people compared with the personalities of bad people.

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