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Awareness of/about

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APARIDA
 Post subject: Awareness of/about
 Post Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 2:32 am 
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Students


Posts: 10
Hi,

I came across this question in MGMAT CAT1. Out of the following two answers, I picked the first one and it turned out to be wrong.

- has increased awareness about pending environmental legislation
- has increased awareness of pending environmental legislation

When I searched the phrase "awareness about" in popular news sites e.g time.com, http://www.chicagotribune.com etc, I found number of web pages with this phrase. Please confirm whether or not "awareness about" is correct.

Thanks in advance
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priyankur.saha
 Post subject: Re: Awareness of/about
 Post Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 2:43 pm 
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Posts: 38
"Awareness of" is the correct usage.
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JonathanSchneider
 Post subject: Re: Awareness of/about
 Post Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 4:24 pm 
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ManhattanGMAT Staff


Posts: 480
Location: Durham, NC
"Awareness of" is indeed prefered.
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d_taneja
 Post subject: Re: Awareness of/about
 Post Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 2:23 pm 
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Students


Posts: 23
"awareness about" and "awareness of" both are correct idioms so no dispute that one is wrong and one is right.. Even preference is also not the case but this all depends on the requirement of sentence



awareness about --> To spread/distribute information about something

> Thousands run to raise awareness about cancer in US/India

> Building public awareness about smoking



awareness of --> Have little knowledge of somethinh

The public has little awareness of engineering





U can just replace awareness with knowledge -->



But in this sentence

"environmental organizations, homeowners, and small business owners have increased awareness (knowledge) of pending environmental legislation"


"environmental organizations, homeowners, and small business owners have increased awareness (knowledge) about pending environmental legislation"


What do u think that what should be correct
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RonPurewal
 Post subject: Re: Awareness of/about
 Post Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 9:10 am 
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ManhattanGMAT Staff


Posts: 7146
d_taneja wrote:
"awareness about" and "awareness of" both are correct idioms so no dispute that one is wrong and one is right.. Even preference is also not the case but this all depends on the requirement of sentence



awareness about --> To spread/distribute information about something

> Thousands run to raise awareness about cancer in US/India

> Building public awareness about smoking



awareness of --> Have little knowledge of somethinh

The public has little awareness of engineering





U can just replace awareness with knowledge -->



But in this sentence

"environmental organizations, homeowners, and small business owners have increased awareness (knowledge) of pending environmental legislation"


"environmental organizations, homeowners, and small business owners have increased awareness (knowledge) about pending environmental legislation"


What do u think that what should be correct


with "HAVE awareness", only "of" is acceptable. you can't "have awareness about" something; that's not idiomatic.

in general, "awareness about" is questionable from the standpoint of formal language; it should be replaceable by "awareness of" + SPECIFIC TERM(S).
for instance:
"awareness about smoking" --> what does this mean? this is totally unclear. way too vague for formal language.
"awareness of the health problems caused by smoking" --> now this is good.

"awareness about cancer" --> again, this doesn't really mean anything specific.
"awareness of the incidence of / of the causes of / of the risk factors for cancer" --> better.

i would not pick any choice with "aware(ness) about".
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