So...That and Such...That Result Clauses in Technical English
5 exercises — practise so...that and such...that result clauses in incident reports and specs.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Choose the sentence with the correct pattern for describing degree before an adjective:
"So slow that" is correct: "so" is used directly before an adjective (or adverb) to express degree, followed by a "that"-clause stating the result. "Such" (options A and D), by contrast, is used before a noun phrase (optionally including an adjective), not before a bare adjective — "such a slow query", not "such slow" or "such a slow" without the following noun. Option C is ungrammatical, inserting an article between "so" and the adjective, which "so" never takes.
2 / 5
Choose the sentence with the correct pattern for describing degree before a noun phrase:
"Such a chaotic rollout" is correct: "such" is used before a full noun phrase (article + adjective + noun) to express degree leading to a result. Option A is ungrammatical — "so" cannot directly precede an article. Option B ("so chaotic a rollout") is a valid but much more formal, literary inversion pattern (so + adjective + article + noun) that is technically grammatical but unusual and stylistically out of place in typical technical writing; it is not the standard, expected pattern being tested here. Option C omits the required article "a" after "such", which is necessary before a singular countable noun like "rollout".
3 / 5
A postmortem states: "The retry logic caused _____ many duplicate requests that the payment gateway rate-limited us." Choose the correct quantity expression before "many" in a so/such result clause.
"So many" is the correct fixed pattern: "so" combines directly with the quantifiers "many" (for countable nouns) and "much" (for uncountable nouns) to express degree before a result clause — "so many duplicate requests", "so much traffic". "Such a" (option A) does not fit before a plural countable noun in this pattern at all. "Such" (option C) cannot combine directly with "many"; it would require the full noun phrase without "many" acting as the quantifier in this slot, e.g., "such a volume of duplicate requests". "So much" (option D) is used with uncountable nouns, but "duplicate requests" is countable and plural, requiring "many" instead.
4 / 5
Choose the sentence that correctly uses "so...that" with an adverb to describe how a deployment script behaved:
"So quickly that" is correct: "so" precedes the adverb "quickly" (not the adjective form "quick"), followed by "that" to introduce the result clause. Option A incorrectly uses "such" before an adverb, which is ungrammatical — "such" only precedes noun phrases, never adverbs. Option C incorrectly uses the adjective form "quick" where an adverb modifying the verb "executed" is required. Option D incorrectly uses "as" instead of "that" to introduce the result clause; "so...that" is the fixed pairing, and "as" does not substitute for "that" in this structure.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "such...that" with an uncountable noun to describe a result in a capacity planning document?
"Such unexpected demand" is correct: "demand" here is an uncountable noun, and "such" precedes uncountable noun phrases without an article — "such unexpected demand", not "such an unexpected demand". Option A incorrectly uses "as" instead of "that" to introduce the result clause, and also incorrectly treats "demand" as needing "so much" plus a noun rather than the correct "such" + noun pattern being tested — while "so much unexpected demand that" would be separately valid, pairing "so much" with "as" breaks the required "that" result-clause structure. Option B incorrectly adds the article "an" before an uncountable noun, which "such" does not require or allow with uncountable nouns. Option C incorrectly uses "so" directly before a noun phrase, which is ungrammatical since "so" requires an adjective, adverb, or quantifier like "much/many" immediately after it, not a bare noun phrase.