Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <phrase-usage><phrase-request>
Title: He is honest (9 out of 10). How to construct a phrase in which a person's honesty is scored on a scale?
Question: I'd like to describe a person that he is a honest person and add how honest he is but couldn't figure out. How can I say this?   He is honest on the scale of 9 out of 10.    Is this correct? Or is there any shorter form that native speakers say?

Answers:
sents: text: I think a more likely construction would be: I’d give him nine out of ten for honesty.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/4275/Mike Scott
score: 46
sents: text: He is honest on the scale of 9 out of 10 is not fluent or idiomatic.
text: If I had to express it with a scale, I would say something like On a scale of one to ten, his honesty is a nine.
text: or If you ranked honesty on a scale from one to ten, his would be a nine.
text: or He's a nine on a one-to-ten scale of honesty.
text: But really, it sounds awkward and clumsy to rank someone's honesty on a numeric scale; I would rather say something like "He is almost completely honest" or "He is nearly always honest."
text: That may be more of a stylistic issue than a linguistic one, though.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/15971/stangdon
score: 38
sents: text: If you want short and pithy, you may have the wrong subject.
text: If you want short, pithy and dynamic, you may also have the wrong verb.
text: His honesty is 9 out of 10.
text: Without further context, we can't tell whether this places his honesty at a 90% occurrence rate or puts him in the 90th percentile of his peer group, but that's hardly relevant.
text: The one-to-ten rating scale is rarely used with precise measurements, and tends to represent nothing more than the strength of a gut-level reaction.
text: By the way, the scale isn't 9 out of 10.
text: The scale is 1 to 10 (or sometimes 0 to 10), the rating is the 9 out of that range.
text: Since it is a rating, we can use the verb "to rate": His honesty rates 9 out of 10.
text: If you're not comfortable with the verb "to rate", the less formal "to get" serves the same function: His honesty gets 9 out of 10.
text: The stative "is" implies that you don't expect the rating to change.
text: Dynamic verbs like "rates" and "gets" imply that the rating could change over time.
text: Perhaps is honesty rates a 9 this year, but next year his rating might drop to 3.
text: As a final note, the title of your question also works.
text: I don't expect any native-speaking reader to be confused or mislead by
text: He's honest (9 out of 10).
text: where the parenthetical functions as an abbreviated afterthought or aside.
text: I immediately interpreted it as "He's honest.
text: ([I give/rate his honesty a] 9 out of [a 1 to] 10 [scale].)
text: " Someone else might interpret it as "He is honest (9 [times] out of 10)", which is practically the same general sentiment, if somewhat less generous.
text: The simple parenthetical may be poor style in a formal context, but it looks fine from the perspective of an informal, conversational register.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/12283/Gary Botnovcan
score: 15
sents: text: An option that maybe doesn't have quite the same meaning, but is certainly more natural-sounding, is: He is honest 90% of the time
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/62896/georgewatson
score: 4
sents: text: Honesty is not about percentages.
text: Honesty is about personal gain.
text: If he's honest most of the time, but lies about the critical things that, in the proper social context, he should not lie about, then the "90%" rating is meaningless.
text: Some things do not make sense to evaluate in terms of percentages.
text: i.e.: "Oh, I don't sleep with 99% of the women I meet, I only slept with that one."
text: I think honesty falls into this category.
text: There is no fluent way to describe what you're trying to describe, because honesty doesn't work that way.
text: The concept itself is bizarre, so any description of it will be bizarre to begin with.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/22524/Nelson
score: 4
sents: text: I'd like to also suggest the following:
text: He's a nine out of ten on the honesty scale.
text: This is idiomatic, and quite common in my experience.
text: Additionally, in my neck of the woods, we say something like this often enough: On a scale from one to honest, he's a nine.
text: Since we so often rate things from 1 to 10, it's left implicit that the adjective ("honest") is the value of a score of 10.
text: It's worth noting that this second construction is usually said with some sense of humour, since "a scale from one to honest" is, when taken literally, rather silly.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/20700/Eric Dand
score: 3
sents: text: Someone who is perfectly honest, even to the point that it might actually sometimes be a problem rather than a virtue, is "honest to a fault".
text: So in this case, we might say, "honest, though not to a fault".
text: This nine out of ten concept seems dodgy.
text: If a retailer rips off 1 in 10 customers, I would simply call them dishonest, not "9 out of 10 honest".
text: A reputation for honesty is very sensitive to fairly slight blemishes.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/197/Kaz
score: 3
sents: text: Isn't there a more simple way?
text: Suggestions:
text: He is quite honest
text: He is rather honest
text: He is fairly honest
text: He is really honest
text: He is very honest Variant:
text: He is a [quite|rather|fairly|very|really]
text: honest person
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/62966/Erwan
score: 2
sents: text: Rating on scales from 1 to 10 is so common that it has become idiomatic to say things like: On a scale of 1 to perfectly honest, he’s a 9 where the 10 at the top of the scale is implied.
text: Examples of this construction:
text: On a scale of 1 to America, how free are you tonight?
text: On a scale of 1 to even, I can’t
text: On a scale of one to Britney Spears, how stressed are you?
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/40259/G Tony Jacobs
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
To express degrees of honesty, one may say he is a [quite|rather|fairly|very|really] honest person.
Variant: He is a [quite|rather|fairly|very|really] honest person