If you go to the Corpus of Contemporary American English and do a search
for any noun in the five words following the verb 'lower' and compare the
results to any noun in the five words following the verb 'reduce', you'd
find that

1. following 'reduce' the noun 'number' is the fourth most common,
occurring 841 times with many hits in the academic genre.

2. On the other hand, for the verb 'lower' the noun 'number' ranks as the
46th most commonly occurring noun collocate with only 33 instances and most
of these are in the spoken, news, and magazine genres with only a handful
in academic writing.

So your dictionary is correct, but it is not distinguishing between
occasional usage in spoken, newspaper, and magazine genres (and markedly
uncommon usage in academic writing) on the one hand, and typical academic
usage on the other where clearly 'reduce' is the preferred verb.

Three cheers for your instinctive correction that is supported by large
corpus data.

Rob



On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 3:28 AM, Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I think the discomfort is the divergence from the expected idiom (mixed
> styles).
>
> Perhaps the following will be helpful, depending on the context.  "Within"
> suggests a formal definition for cases, whereas "lower" and first person
> suggests that maybe his own efforts at recuperative steps will do it.
>
> "The goal of my efforts is to reduce . . . "
> "I will keep my children at home so as to lower . . . seasonal flu cases
> in Washington."
>
> Bruce Despain
>
>
> --- [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> From: "Castilleja, Janet" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Lower
> Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 21:19:17 +0000
>
>  Hello
>
>
>
> I was grading a student paper today when I read this line:
>
>
>
> I will attempt to lower the number of seasonal influenza cases within
> Washington State.
>
>
>
> I was immediately tempted to suggest that he use ‘reduce’ instead of
> ‘lower,’ but now I’m not sure if there is any rational reason to do so.
> The dictionary indicates that while ‘lower’ is a comparative, It can be
> used in other ways.  What do you folks think?
>
>
>
> Janet
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>

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