More Simple?

Assaf writes:
I recently wrote an English test and part of the test was a Cloze passage where you fill in the missing word.

A point was taken off for the following sentence "Edison's Inventions made people's lives more ______ ." I would like to know if filling in "simple" in the missing space is correct. I know it is better English to use the word "simpler" instead of "more simple" but is this just convention or is there an actual English grammar rule forbidding the usage of this form. As far as I know in school I always learned that words with more than two syllables can get either a "more" or the addition "-er" except for a few exceptions such as "beautiful" or longer syllable words.

I agree that "simpler" would be a briefer answer. But "more simple" is also correct. It's a pretty rare usage, though. By the way, you can't double an intensifier—"simpler" means "more simple," so "more simpler" would mean "more more simple." For the same reason you can't say "most biggest" or "more happier."

Nevertheless, William Shakespeare himself broke this rule in his play Julius Caesar when Marc Antony is speaking at Caesar's funeral. Pointing to the dead man's wounds, Marc Antony says: "This was the most unkindest cut of all." And English teachers have been embarrassed for four centuries about that!

Comments

[Timothy Takemoto]

This page
http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/ADJECTIVES5.cfm
says that adjectives ending in: -y, -ly, -ow, -le, -er or -ure can take both.

As well as some common adjectives such as: handsome, polite, pleasant, common, quiet.

Using googlefight to see which of the two are more in use, we find that it is generally the 2- syllable-rule conforming version that is the more common. Eg. yellower
This page
http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/ADJECTIVES5.cfm
says that adjectives ending in: -y, -ly, -ow, -le, -er or -ure can take both.

As well as some common adjectives such as: handsome, polite, pleasant, common, quiet.

Using googlefight to see which of the two are more in use, we find that it is generally the 2- syllable-rule conforming version that is the more common. Eg. yellower
http://tinyurl.com/ajce2