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I have two quite similar fracture populations and I try to emphasize this in the following sentence. But which of the prepositions/solutions is correct in British English?

The baseline characteristics of these fracture populations showed a close resemblance in median age, sex and comorbidity distributions.

The baseline characteristics of these fracture populations showed a close resemblance on median age, sex and comorbidity distributions.

Or should I rewrite the sentence as follows?

The baseline characteristics of these fracture populations showed closely resembling median age, sex and comorbidity distributions.

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I think you would do better to replace resembling/resemblance with corresponding/correspondence.

The baseline characteristics of these fracture populations closely correspond...

or

The baseline characteristics of these fracture populations show a close correspondence...

In my experience, "correspondence in" is much more commonly used than "correspondence on". "correspondence in their..." would also be good English, as would "correspondence in terms of their...". I favour "closely correspond" over "show a close correspondence" because it is simpler.

"Correspondence" is the technical term commonly used in discussions of statistics. "Resemblance" has a vaguer meaning in this context.

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  • Why bother introducing the concept of "correspondence" at all here? It seems to me all you're really saying is The baseline characteristics of these fracture populations are clearly defined. Or if it's important to emphasis that there are many different "fracture populations" (whatever they are), These fracture populations share clearly defined baseline characteristics.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 6, 2022 at 14:34
  • @FumbleFingers I've stayed away from this site for years. This kind of pettifoggery is why.
    – itsbruce
    Commented Apr 7, 2022 at 22:28
  • I made a mistake. I intended to post my comment under the question, not your answer. But it is basically Off Topic "style advice", where you might prefer in, some others might prefer on, and I personally might go for something a little different, such as with regard to.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 8, 2022 at 10:38
  • Ah, that makes more sense of your comment, for sure.
    – itsbruce
    Commented Apr 8, 2022 at 14:52
  • I certainly didn't intend to penalise or annoy you - simply to make the point to the OP that if he's unsure about which preposition to use (by implication - doesn't already know it's just a stylistic choice), he might consider rephrasing so the issue doesn't arise anyway. But have an upvote from me by way of apologising for my carelessness! :)
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 8, 2022 at 18:04
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The baseline characteristics of these fracture populations showed closely resembling median age, sex and comorbidity distributions.

This is definitely incorrect. "Resemble" is a transitive verb, and while listing several things as the subject does allow the reader to infer that they are each others' objects (that is, they resemble each other), it's not grammatically correct, and is very awkward. Also, in this wording, it's the median age, sex, and comorbidity distributions that are doing the resembling, rather the fracture populations.

The baseline characteristics of these fracture populations showed a close resemblance in median age, sex and comorbidity distributions.

This also doesn't actually have the fracture populations as the subject of "showed". Rather, the subject is "baseline characteristics". The structure of this sentence is rather odd; you are saying the characteristics are similar in age, etc., when actually it's the populations that are similar. I recommend "The baseline characteristics of median age, sex, and comorbidity distributions were very similar between these fracture populations." Perhaps replace "between" with "across", although that might be misinterpreted as "within".

As a side note, I find the term "fracture population" highly opaque (does it mean "population of people with bone fractures"?). Perhaps the context provides more clarity, but if you're using it on its own, you should be more explicit.

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I would use neither resembling/resemblance nor corresponding/correspondence, but the word used in the first sentence, similar.

The baseline characteristics of these fracture populations were similar in median age, sex and comorbidity distributions.

Note that I have avoided an unnecessary construction with an abstract noun “showed a similarity” when the emboldened simple phrase with an adjective serves. The show must go, full-stop!

However, if one must show off, one should think about what is being shown. It is distributions. So one could restructure:

The baseline characteristics of these fracture populations showed similar distributions in median age, sex and comorbidity.

I think I prefer this stylistically to subjecting ‘distributions’ to a string of adjectives, even though it lacks the simple directness of using the verb ‘to be’.

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  • Another enemy of plain English strikes a blow against me! So many naked emperors!
    – David
    Commented Apr 7, 2022 at 22:07

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