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Currently there are about 4,000 international students from 110 different nations across the world, thus/so the university offers perfect conditions for socializing and making new friends.

Is this sentence correct formal English? I don't know if I can use "thus" here, or if I should use "so" instead. Or is it better to rephrase as follows?

With about 4,000 international students from 110 different nations across the world, the university offers perfect conditions for socializing and making new friends.

In German we would write the latter, but is it possible to use "with" this way in English?

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    I'd modify your 2nd option like this: "With (nearly or over) 4000 international students from 110 different nations, the university offers ideal conditions for socializing and making new friends".
    – Kristina Lopez
    Jan 31, 2014 at 17:55
  • @KristinaLopez Why would you use this phrase "nearly or over " instead of word "about"? I am just asking because word "about" sounds good to me.
    – Elis Byberi
    Sep 3, 2018 at 16:52
  • @ElisByberi, sorry for the confusion, my intention was to suggest using “nearly” or “over” to be more accurate, not “nearly or over”.
    – Kristina Lopez
    Sep 3, 2018 at 17:46
  • @KristinaLopez I thought you used parentheses to denote replacing of word "about" - by the way, what about using forward slash "/" like "With around/nearly/over/about 4000"? It still looks confusing. I do not think there is any grammatically correct way to denote multiple words choosing, do you?
    – Elis Byberi
    Sep 4, 2018 at 13:36

3 Answers 3

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Either thus or so would make your first example sentence correct. However, your suggested rephrasing is also correct, and is the form I would recommend.

In the first example, thus and so are both being used as synonyms for therefore and meaning "as a result".

There are many grammatically correct ways to construct a sentence which declares that "because A is true, B is true also." My preference for your rephrasing is based on style and personal opinion, not grammar.

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Technically speaking, "thus" is not a coordinating conjunction, but a conjunctive adverb. Using it as suggested above would not be correct formal English.

Why?

The emended version would look like this: "Currently there are about 4000 international students from 110 different nations across the world, thus the university offers perfect conditions for socializing and making new friends."

The problem with the above is that you would have two independent clauses joined by a comma - aka a "comma splice."

"So", in contrast, is in fact a coordinating conjunction, so there would be no error if you used it to join the two clauses: "Currently there are about 4000 international students from 110 different nations across the world, so the university offers perfect conditions for socializing and making new friends."

I agree with the previous poster, however; your second version is more elegantly phrased.

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  • Does this mean that the sentence "They have got a new machine, thus letting them to cut down on manual labour" is an incorrect use of 'thus'?
    – Aumkaar Pranav
    May 12, 2020 at 7:39
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Using either thus or so would make your first example sentence correct. However, your suggested rephrasing is also correct, and is the form I would recommend.

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