Slick advertising campaigns, soaring gold prices and increasing purchasing power for consumers have helped develop a market for diamonds.
This sentence is from an error spotting exercise which suggests to use diamond in place of diamonds. May I know why diamonds is wrong here ? Moreover isn't the for used in the sentence wrong here ? Of would have been better in place of for I.e. purchasing power of consumers .
I would use diamonds. But I think it is splitting hairs in a case where the sentence would be understood either way.
In a strict sense, diamond in the example is being used to describe a commodity, which tend to be uncountable. For example in "investing in gold", the quantity is unknown.
But unlike gold (you wouldn't say golds), diamonds are discrete objects, so most people would think of them as countable.
So in regular usage, I think most people would say diamonds.
Instead, I would prefer "increased purchasing power".
increasing implies a changing state (though we have no reference or implication something is changing), while increased implies a more fixed wealthier condition.
The for is OK where it is, because the items mentioned are for the benefit of consumers.
