Grammar: ‘Too’ or ‘Enough’?

‘Too’ or ‘Enough’?

Should I use ‘too’ or ‘enough’? And how should I use them? These two little words often cause confusion, and so do ‘too much’ and ‘too many’. We use too and enough to modify nouns, adjectives and adverbs.

There are several grammatical points we need to consider when we use these modifiers. We’ll do a quick run-through here, but for more details go to the Grammar Reference section.

Let’s begin with the basics: countable and uncountable nouns.

There are too many rules for me to remember!

Too much practice makes me tired!

So we use too many with countable nouns and too much with uncountable nouns.

Now let’s look at how ‘too + adjective’ = ‘not + opposite/near opposite adjective + enough’.

It’s too cold to eat outside. It’s not warm enough to eat outside.

This T-shirt’s too small for me. It’s not big enough for me.

So we can see that too goes before adjectives, but enough goes after adjectives.

The same is true with adverbs.

He speaks too quickly for me to follow. He doesn’t speak slowly enough for me to follow.

She drives too carelessly. She doesn’t drive carefully enough.

So too goes before adverbs, but enough goes after adverbs.

And what about enough and nouns? Let’s check out some examples:

If I don’t get enough sleep I can’t concentrate on my studies.

I haven’t got enough warm clothes for this weather.

We can see that enough goes before nouns.

Well, I hope this wasn’t too confusing, and that I’ve explained it clearly enough!  I always say you can never have too many examples or too much practice!

Now it’s time to see what you remember by doing this mini-test.

‘Too’ or ‘enough’?  ‘Too much’ or ‘too many’?