"Both the number of shops which closed and opened increased."

[Mehrgan]

Hi,

This is the problem I've faced writing a sentence, and I'm not sure where 'both' should be located in the sentence.

1. The number of both the shops that closed and the shops that opened increased.
2. Both the numbers of the shops that opened and closed increased.
3. The number of shops that both closed and opened increased.

I have no reason why any should be more natural than others. Or perhaps they're all wrong!

 

[jutfrank]

The logical structure is both X and Y. In this case, X and Y are numbers, hence:

Both the number of shops that closed and the number of shops that opened increased.