| It's possible to interchange roughly and about in each of these four sentences with the same meaning. About can be confusing for learners when they first see it as a degree adverb, because they're familiar with its use in prepositional phrases, such as Books and newspapers were spread about all over the room. Nearly is slightly different to roughly and about, because nearly means "almost", or "not quite". So, if Jane spends nearly one-third of her salary on rent, it means that she spends just under one-third. If we said roughly or about, her rent could be slightly more or slightly less than one-third. If it takes me nearly ten minutes to walk to the station, it means it takes me not quite ten minutes. All of these adverbs could be used in writing too, but if you're writing a report it'd be usual to enter the actual figures or percentages in brackets, so: Roughly half 53% of the children in the study could not identify the US on a map of the world. In conversation, we often use about when talking about time. Shall we meet at about seven o'clock? He says he'll be here in about five minutes. And interestingly, we often talk about distances in terms of time. I live about half an hour out of town. It's about three hours on the train to London. Well, Samad, thank you for your question, I think that's about all I have to say about these adverbs. |
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