I don't know if you've noticed but people have stopped saying and writing the word 'fewer', in favour of using 'less' for everything.
The traditional grammar is that 'less' is used for mass nouns and 'fewer' is used for countable nouns, so you would have less chocolate and fewer chocolates, less time and fewer minutes, less patience and fewer scruples.
But people now just use 'less' all the time. Even in august publications like The New Yorker and the NY Times and The Age it crops up again and again in the wrong usage.
This is something I would like to see rectified in 2008 people, please. So if you haven't set New Years resolutions for yourself you now have one: say 'less' less.
Flickr badge
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Hey! This is a favourite bone to pick of mine (along with those common mistakes: 'Klu Klux Klan' and 'Antarctica').
My Rule of Thumb is that 'fewer' is used for quantitative terms, 'less' for qualitative;
e.g. "I now have fewer paracetamol capsules and less of a headache".
I hope this gramamtical discussion doesn't earn me and Mia fewer friends...
I used fewer playing scrabulous today - does that earn me pedant points?
Myf
Hear hear! My boyfriend hates me because I keep correcting him on hie incorrect use of 'less' instead of 'fewer'. I vote we also resolve to correct as many people as we can on this issue - it's one dear to my heart too ;)
Oops - I meant 'his' not 'hie', though that's a real word too! ;)
i can almost hear the eyes rolling as people read this. but you know, pedants rule.
Language is organic. It evolves.
Don't fight the tide, flow with it.
Post a Comment