Learn English – Their products are of very high quality

prepositions

Why should we have of in this sentence?

Their products are of very high quality.

Can we simply drop the word of?

Best Answer

The reason this is tricky is that "quality" is a noun, but that "high quality" is often used as an adjective phrase. When we say

The products are of high quality.

We are saying that high quality is something that the products have. This is probably the best option.

When we say:

The products are high quality.

We are saying that "high quality" is something the products are, similar to:

The products are red.

I'm not entirely sure that this is 100% proper grammar, but it's certainly very common in informal English. You can get away with it because "high quality" is recognized as an adjective.

Notice that you can't do this with every expression.

The products are dubious quality. Wrong

The products are of red. Wrong

The products are of dubious quality. Correct

This uses the same pattern, but the first phrase just sounds wrong because "dubious quality" is not idiomatic as an adjective the way "high quality" is. The second sentence is wrong because "red" truly an adjective is and not a noun in the way that "quality" is.

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