Is "reduce" transitive or intransitive?
Is the verb reduce used incorrectly in the sentence below? Would you personally choose to replace reduce with an alternative such as drop or fall?
The birth rate has reduced over the past 10 years.
Solution 1:
Reduce may be used as a transitive or intransitive verb.
The birth rate has reduced/dropped/fallen over the past ten years
are all correct. Here reduce is used intransitively.
He reduced the number of mistakes from ten to five.
Here reduce is used transitively.