Tortoise
Know what you're doing yet?
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2017
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I think the patterns "as <adjective> a thing as" and "not that <adjective> a thing" shouldn't have "of". I think I saw a more formal grammar recommendation about this somewhere, but I don't have a link.Though for those three latter examples. I think the sentences still work with the "of"
As for the third, if "outside" is used as a preposition then there absolutely must not be an "of". It's obviously not a noun here ("the outside of the box was painted blue" is valid as it's using "the outside" as a noun). The last possibility is using "outside of" as a phrase meaning "except for". I guess "the Crocelli except for the interior are more civilized" is kind of OK, but I think it doesn't fit well with "more".
I searched the page for whether there were other incorrect cases of "outside/inside of", and the previous side story chapter had "stepping inside of the beam's arc". That's clearly wrong, as it's obviously using "inside" as a preposition. I think "inside/outside/off of" are the most common uses of bad "of" - it probably has to do with how it's possible to have the word combination "inside of" etc be valid with "the inside of" and such noun uses, so most people don't have such an obvious "this MUST be wrong" reaction as with something like "he's from of London", where they've never seen the "from of" combination in any context in any valid text.