Of course the official rule is that for countable things, like apples, we say fewer, as in, "Why are there fewer apples?" And for things that you can't really count, you use less, as in "We need more dream time and less screen time."
But recently, even from native speakers who've been to university, you can hear people using 'less' when the grammar books say they should use 'fewer'. Language changes and there are many examples of things that we say differently than we write. What are your thoughts?
Should we grammar nazi this until everyone gets back in line? Should we just let language evolve and enjoy the ride?
Do you think it will settle in with spoken and written forms being different?
Do you think this will become the norm in English?
By the way, I blame supermarkets with their "9 items or less" signs.
Not just signs in stores, but math and general computer use. "Less than & greater than", for example. I have been into programming since the 1990s, so less than / greater than was a common calculation to perform.
I was in my 30s when someone told me about the word fewer.
In programming, I'm sure that if you knew the exact amount of something was fewer than another amount, you still use less than to check.
The supermarket express lane signs really bother me 😅 Like, come on, you want people to buy things from you, you put your best, most professional foot forward and use "fewer"! But in general, confusing "less" and "fewer" in conversation doesn't bother me and I most definitely am not blowhard enough to correct anyone on it. Different if we're talking about something formal, like written assignments, lab reports, term papers, work reports, or grant proposals where we're trying to be taken seriously.
In the UK, we have Waitrose supermarkets, which have a "10 items or fewer" lane. The rest are "N items or less". I wouldn't go out of my way to find a Waitrose – they are fewer and further between than other kinds – but I certainly appreciate it when I shop at one and buy a small number of items.
Likewise, with general usage and mis-usage of "less", I wouldn't go out of my way to correct anyone, but I enjoy it when "fewer" is used correctly. And I do so myself, of course!
These sorts of shifts in language seem inevitable, and always seem to be in the direction of a decline in precision. But I wonder if that perception is just a cognitive bias: perhaps interesting and exciting words are emerging but we're less likely to spot them until they themselves begin to decline in precision?
Hahah I've never been on the reviewing end, thankfully. I figure it's like job applications, you don't want to be the one who gets thrown out because of a stupid quirk of the reader.
Well, technically, in formal writing 'less' is incorrect. Do not use it if you want to come across as educated. It can be considered correct in casual speech because once something is common, we really can't call it incorrect, but using it will have social implications when you are being judged on language.
I almost always hear less anymore. It irks me, but language necessarily evolves. As far as I can tell, at least in my area of the south eastern U.S., less is the norm. I hope that few(er) does not become totally obsolete.
I suspected that, happened to me too, when some Lemmy instances were overloaded. No biggie: if the two comments from the other duplicate are reposted here, I'll delete that one; otherwise we leave it there.
The Oxford English dictionary also gives one definition of less as fewer, but with a warning:
A.1.c A smaller number of; fewer. This originates from the OE. construction of lǽs adv. (quasi-n.) with a partitive genitive. Freq. found but generally regarded as incorrect.