I'm not a student with English as my mother tongue. I'm analysing an English text. I looked up in the dictionary the verb "to increase" and the noun "increase".
I found these examples:
- Japan's industrial output increased by 2%
- Our cross margin increased to 24%
What is the difference between these two sentences?
Does "by" in the first sentence show that 2% is the maximum percentage of the increase?
Does "to" in the second sentence show that there has been a progress in the action?
Has the level of the increase started hypothetically, for example, from5%, then 10%, then 15% and now is 24%?
Concerning the noun 'increase' I found these examples:
- An increasing number OF customers shop online.
- Any increase in production would be helpful.
Why is the preposition "of" used in the first example and "in" in the second?
Best Answer
You can have an amount of something. It might be money or might be anything else. But I will use money as an example. So imagine I have £50 on Monday and on Tuesday I have £75. :)
But £25 is 50% of £50 so I could also say
I could also say "It is 150% of the value on Monday"
Now suppose I have something that is measured in %, for example the unemployment rate is measured as a percentage of the population.
In January it was 10%, in February it is 24%
Now in this situation using "by" often causes mathematical mistakes. You should say
But many people say "it has increased by 14%" even though this is mathematically confusing
In your examples the Japanese industrial output is measured in Yen. There has been an increase. The change in output is 2/100 of the previous output.
In the second example, the cross margin was less than 24%. Now it is 24%
Concerning increase. We use "a number of" which justifies the use of "of". We also use "of" with a value
We use "in" with the thing that is increasing