Much as he worked hard...

[spongie]

Hi,

I have recently had a test and I had to change the sentence "No matter how hard he worked, it didn't work" into more emphatic one. I wrote "Much as he worked hard, it didn't work" and I got half a point for this answer. Is it incorrect in any way?

Thanks in advance.

[Grumpy]

It isn't grammatically incorrect, but it's clumsy and it's no more emphatic than the original sentence. You should have used another construction which avoided the repetition of "worked" and "work", such as "However hard he worked, it was doomed to failure"

[BobK]

...Or 'Try as he might, he couldn't get it to work', or 'He worked and worked, but his efforts were doomed to failure', or 'He toiled for hours, but in vain', or...

b