> It may be used in the hardness testing of plastics with pratically no change.

The difficulty arises because this is fairly typical of colloquial English usage where speech order gets jumbled. Not only is “the hardness testing of plastics” an ugly construction as already noted, but the end phrase is modifying the start of the sentence rather than the adjoining part – it’s a sort of ‘infix construction’, which is a form of usage more prevalent in Ireland than many other parts of the Anglophone world. My recast for clarity would be:

It may, with very little change, be used to test the hardness of plastics.

edit: oh, and don't confuse 'change' meaning variation (in this example) with 'change' = definition 7b. The balance that remains over and is returned when anything is paid for by a piece of money greater than its price.

Last edited by maverick; 12/24/05 12:58 AM.