please empty your brain below
The supermarkets also have a similar proble with less and fewer. Most have te signs "7 items or less", but only the wonderful M&S has the correct signs of "7 items or fewer".

Steve | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 9:02 a.m. | #

i think that by reading that, my grammar has gone right out of the window and my eyes need uncrossing.

zoe | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 9:11 a.m. | #

My colleage tells me off for making the same mistakes, but interestingly no one else does. Its almost as if there are those that went to school that were taught the difference (an elite mob of grammar specialists) and the rest of us. Oh well.....

Jason | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 9:21 a.m. | #

You need to get out... um... unfewer.

Alan | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 9:38 a.m. | #

I spot your "mistakes" on this subject but even I Pedantic of Purley don't point this one out. The problem is that the instigator can be very quickly torn to pieces by by posing a lot of awkward questions in hypothetical cases.

I must confess I did once write to our local Tesco store pointing out that the express isle should be "10 items or fewer" but it was clear that it was impossible to get them to even understand what I was going on about.

You mentioning grains of salt is one classic. The grains of salt are discrete. Therefore it is fewer grains of salt but less salt. By what if was clear that granular salt was being talked about and that the (grains of) was implied in that way that we often do not actually say in conversation or write down ?

Do I have less or fewer days holiday left to take than you ? If I understand the rules correctly then if you and I only take whole days as holiday then I think the answer is fewer. If however one of us can take our holiday in any chunks of time we please then I think the answer is less. But if you don't know the arrangements for me taking holiday how can you possibly be grammatically correct ?

And do these people that criticise ever use the expression "more or less"? I think "more" should be used for discrete amounts and "greater" for continuously measureable amounts. So say "greater or less" or "more or fewer" you those überpedants amongst you. And, unlike the use of "disinterested", when you misuse "less" for "fewer" there is never any loss of understanding. Furthermore people who try to be smart and get it wrong when they use fewer when they did mean less just create a sentence that really grates whereas the occasional incorrect use of "less" should be forgivable.

End of rant. Personally I try to be correct but the complexities and absurdities of this rule mean I let it pass when I think other people are technically wrong.

Pedantic of Purley | 27.06.06 - 10:42 a.m. | #

Less is more.

Great Aunt Annie | 27.06.06 - 10:47 a.m. | #

Blimey, when less, fewer, smaller, \\% of the UK can’t even read all, less, fewer of all the words in The Sun- it’s nice to know there is an elitist web-site.

peter | 27.06.06 - 10:55 a.m. | #

We've got climate change threatening to wreak havoc; bird flu and CJD on the verge of wiping half of us out; terrorists on every street and people get worked up about pissfarting little things like this. They need more sex.

birdman | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 11:35 a.m. | #

Oh and another point (sorry about this). You mention the difference lies in whether a thing is countable or not. But what is meant by countable ? At one extreme a matbematician will say that all the fractions and whole numbers are countable because you can put them in ascending order and know exactly where each item is in the sequence. But what if you are five years old and can only count to ten ? Is the population of London countable ? The Earth ? Does it contain less than 7 billion people or fewer than 7 billion people.

Pedantic of Purley | 27.06.06 - 11:44 a.m. | #

If somebody pops up in your comment box and complains about that, they should be told to fuck off.

Inspector Sands | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 11:45 a.m. | #

PoP - as I understand it you'd have fewer days of holiday, but less holiday - the second being uncountable ("holiday"), whereas in the first instance "days" are the countable noun, and "holiday" is a qualifier...

edd | 27.06.06 - 12:11 p.m. | #

Some confusion arises in the use of "countable" which applies here in its syntactic sense (as opposed to "mass nouns" which are uncountable). If a noun can be pluralised and used with numeric quantifiers (one person, two people, etc.), it's considered countable even if impossible in a practical sense.

"Holiday" is an interesting case because it's differently countable depending on the context. In the example above it's a mass noun and thus "less holiday" is appropriate. But if you take three different holidays in a year, and I only take two, I'd have taken fewer holidays (and also less holiday!). No wonder people frequently misuse fewer/less.

Dunce | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 12:31 p.m. | #

edd. Buts thats my point. "Days" can either be discrete and therefore a countable noun or not depending on circumstances. He took less than six days to complete the task (it took him five days, six hours and 26.27 seconds). But February has fewer days that January.

0,1,2,3 etc are countable when members of the (discrete) set of whole numbers but uncountable when in the continuous spectrum of all real numbers.

Any rule of English that requires what I regard as a deep understanding of numbers and possibly even an understanding of the different sorts of infinity is completely barking mad.

And my second point is that if we are all so confused as to the rules how can we criticise others ?

Pedantic of Purley | 27.06.06 - 12:32 p.m. | #

Great post - a 'foxtrot oscar' and 'get it right up you' from DG. I approve.

Michael | 27.06.06 - 12:44 p.m. | #

And as another grammar pedant most of the time, I do as well.
I never learnt this at school either - if I do it right, it's by instinct.

GoodTwin | 27.06.06 - 1:07 p.m. | #

Right.

Steve: "problem" has a 'm' and "the" has an 'h'
Zoe: "I" is always capitalised (unless it is being sent in a lazy SMS message)
Jason: colleague" has a 'u' and "it's" (in this instance) has an apostrophe
Pedantic: only one "by" is necessary, "aisle" has an 'a' in it and "mathematician" has no 'b'
Goodtwin: is it "learnt" or "learned"?

Bl00dy funny post, DG...

Mr.D. | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 1:33 p.m. | #

A few months ago, I was one of those that called down from my high horse that a 'less' should have been a 'fewer', and I feel rightly put in my place. I blame my mum. The whole grammar thing is something that I don't recall being taught, but my mum is a stickler, and I inherited it.

It's an affliction that means that I tend to mutter under my breath rather too often (eg I hear "different to" and mutter "different from"). And it also means I have a reputation amongst my friends for being a picky (or, rather "finicky" as I always point out) pedant. The funny thing is that I'm consequently always open to ridicule when *I'm* responsible for a typo or mistake myself (for example starting the previous sentence with "And"...)

Still, I'm glad Mr D wrote what he did, to save me succumbing to the temptation...

Wayne | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 2:09 p.m. | #

Mr. D. I might be guilty as charged with "isle" and 'by' but matbmatical is not a grammatical error. It is a typographical error so I challenge you for deviation.

Pedantic of Purley | 27.06.06 - 3:03 p.m. | #

Think I might copy your post for my EFL students. I've heard it on the BBC a couple of times too so you're in good company.

Anji | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 4:58 p.m. | #

I'm chastened. I've managed to piss off the writer of the only non-technical blog I ever read regularly. Moreover, I've annoyed someone who consistently writes with a quality, imagination wit and volume that I can only dream of.

My apologies.

On a brighter note, I have passed birdman's note about me needing more sex on to my wife.

Chris | 27.06.06 - 5:06 p.m. | #

Chris -

What was her response?

Ian.

Ian | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 5:17 p.m. | #

Chris. You have my sympathies actually. I get this a lot with people I work with. (note preposition at end of sentence). You can make a lighthearted, sarcastic or ironic comment in the pub to someone's face and get away with it. You do it in an email or a comment and it may not be interpreted in quite the same way. But (note sentence starting with a "but") I suspect DG rather enjoyed composing his clever little riposte and it gives him something different to write about.

Pedantic of Purley | 27.06.06 - 5:30 p.m. | #



Well covered DG. Excellent.

And you know we'll always be here if you slip up occasionally.

NiC | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 6:06 p.m. | #

Phew!

MJ | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 7:55 p.m. | #

I'm pleased that my pedantry over the past couple of years has led to a thousand or so people being better informed on the less/fewer distinction today, and, dealing with it in the way you have has made it infinitely more memorable for them. Mission accomplished I think

But, I shall still continue to look out for errors in an otherwise error-fewer blog, just because it pleases me to uphold standards of English in a world where most people are more concerned with me-ism and getting themselves into debt than the correctness of their speech.

Another one I've noted you use occasionally is 'off of'...

Blue Witch | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 8:23 p.m. | #

Ooo I'd not spotted him doing "off-of" Witchy... I'll keep 'em peeled for that too

NiC | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 9:32 p.m. | #

Oi! Get off of my back...

diamond geezer | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 9:37 p.m. | #

I'd like to point out that I have difficulty understanding DG's problem here. Even the most cursory review of DG's archive will reveal that counting is something he is EXCEPTIONALLY good at.

By which I mean, "At which he is exceptionally good", of course.

whatever

noelbear

noel | Homepage | 27.06.06 - 10:06 p.m. | #

I've heard that more is less, or when it comes to comments is it fewer?
I just can't count.

pop artist | 27.06.06 - 11:04 p.m. | #

Will we end on this 30th comment, or will the final number be greater?

Quink | Homepage | 28.06.06 - 12:22 a.m. | #

I don't think 'greater' and 'fewer' can be used in an oppositional sense like 'more' and less.' To be really silly, I'm just going to create some adjective tables, with adjectives, comparatives and superlatives.

some - more - most
some - fewer - fewest
some - less - least
great - greater - greatest

As we can see, you can't use greater and fewer in the same way as more and less because they don't really come from the same adjectival root. Also, greater is often used in a geographical or abstract sense, whereas fewer is exclusively numerical.

And yes, all of my grammatical knowledge, in however incomplete a form, comes from learning Latin.

chloe | Homepage | 28.06.06 - 9:01 a.m. | #

I very much enjoyed this post and have only come out from under my bridge to point out there are no "rules of English grammar".

There is common usage and there is good style, but there is no body qualified to pass any laws that prevent us from using the language how we want.

For my money, all that matters is that your meaning is unambiguous and economically expressed. To a lesser extent (fewer extent?) you might pay attention to the cadence of what you write but that is just the icing on the great cake of English prose.

Dominic Sayers | Homepage | 28.06.06 - 9:10 a.m. | #

How about a week of writing the blog in chav style Estuary English? Then we can all feel superior at all the mistakes we spot.

Michael | 28.06.06 - 12:05 p.m. | #

Ha, your grammatical mistakes are nothing compared to the crap we send out in our official letters! I get called anal at work when I point out things. I've learnt that I really couldn't care less about them now. Or should that be fewer?

Laura-Ann | Homepage | 28.06.06 - 1:58 p.m. | #

infuckingcredible. Geezer, I'm glad you are getting visitors and comments, however, I don't think I have ever seen so many inane comments on such a subject that was actually a very good (satirical and/or sarcastic) post/response.

fergive me gremetical errs plz
cheers geezer!

scoakat | 29.06.06 - 2:55 a.m. | #

This correct grammar thing seems to be an age problem. Grammar was always taught in schools along with spelling as a matter of course in the 50's & 60's, but now hardly anyone seems to care. Just read your local paper & have a red pen handy for all the mis-spellings & bad grammar. Great post D.G. Glad I'm not the only voice in the Wilderness.

Tina | 29.06.06 - 1:47 p.m. | #

Oh that's great. Thanks. I'm still laughing.

And yet, the bothersome thing is finding an opposite for these words.

What's the opposite for less?
What's the opposite for fewer?

Personaly, I couldn't care fewer, but stil . . .

Bock the Robber | Homepage | 01.07.06 - 2:29 a.m. | #











TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy