Live vs. As?

[rustom.hakimiyan]

I'm trying to improve on spotting the like vs. as comparisons. Conceptually, I understand the nuance but i'm having a hard time applying this.

For example: Like needs to follow a noun vs. AS needs to follow a clause.

I encountered something during my studies which I can't figure out:

Like the planets, the stars are in motion.
As the planets, the stars are in motion.

Apparently, "like" is the better option here but I chose "as" because I thought this was comparing the motion of the stars vs. the motion of the planets. Why is that wrong?

[RonPurewal]

Conveniently, you already answered this question yourself.

"The planets" is a noun. Not a clause. So, "like", not "as".

(Of note, you wrote both relationships backwards. The noun follows "like" and the clause follows "as", not vice versa.)

[rustom.hakimiyan]

Conveniently, you already answered this question yourself.

"The planets" is a noun. Not a clause. So, "like", not "as".

(Of note, you wrote both relationships backwards. The noun follows "like" and the clause follows "as", not vice versa.)

Thanks for the breakdown. Noticed a typo but obviously you caught the meaning -- meant to say "like" not "live" :)

One thing that was tripping me up was when to cut it off was the clause that started with a noun, for example:

- Just like the planets are moving at tremendous speeds, the atmosphere blah blah.

In the above statement, I saw "the planets" and thought it was a noun therefore "like" was appropriate. But, based on some additional studying, I realize that it's a clause because we look at everything until the comma, so it reads -- "the planets are moving at tremendous speeds" and therefore "as" is required.

^^ just trying to explain this to myself again. Thanks!

[RonPurewal]

You can also think about "crossing off" (or just ignoring) modifiers, the same way as you would for other tasks (like finding subjects and verbs, or analyzing the overall structure of a sentence).