“The amount of …” is used to address uncountable
nouns, such as rice, oil, gas, food, energy, time, money, etc.
For example The amount of energy produced rose significantly in 2009.
There was a marginal decline of 1% in the amount of rice consumed
over the past decade.
The amount of time spent on computers did not change over the
period.
In these sentences, “energy ,” “rice ,” and “time ” are uncountable nouns, so
“the amount of ” is used as a quantifier.
Note that the article “ the ” and the preposition “ of ” are always used with “ amount ” and “ number .” However, if an adjective defines them more precisely, the definite article “ the ” changes to
indefinite articles, “ an or a ” depending on the adjective’s initial letter that follows them. For example The
amount of sugar vs.
a
l
arge
amount of sugar
The
number of stores vs.
a
s
ignificant
number of stores
The
amount of food vs.
an
e
normous
amount of food
However, like many other aspects of grammar in English, there are some exceptions: If the “adjective ” used before “amount” and “number” is one of the following words, the
