Grammar: Such and so

Grammar: stronger meaning
Elementary to intermediate level (A1-B1) 

‘So’ can be a little stronger than ‘very’ but how do you use ‘such’?

First, let’s look at some examples of using ‘so’:

He’s so quiet (he rarely says anything)
It was so kind of them to drive us to the airport
It tasted so good (fantastic flavour)
We are so grateful for their help. It helped us a lot.
You are so wrong about Stephen. He’s actually really nice
Your book is so incredibly useful.

Above you can see that ‘so’ is often used with adjectives or adverbs to make their meaning stronger. ‘Such’ can often be used to make similar sentences but is usually used before nouns.

Also, very often ‘such’ is used to refer back to something already mentioned or spoken about.

He seemed rather shy
Yes, he’s such a quiet boy

Don’t you think they were really generous?
Yes, they are such kind people

How was the food yesterday?
The soup had such an amazing flavour

When a noun has a strong meaning, we can use ‘such’ for emphasis eg:

The journey to Spain was such a disaster!
That politician was involved in such a scandal!