Less vs. fewer

[乳头的早餐谷物]

In traditional prescriptive grammar less is the comparative used when speaking of a continuous quantity that is not numerically quantifiable (that is, with mass nouns). Fewer, on the other hand, is used of discrete quantity and numerically quantifiable quantity (or count nouns). Thus, "There is less flour in this canister", but "There are fewer cups (grains, pounds, bags, etc.) of flour in this canister", since flour is uncountable unless it is measured in a unit, in this case cups.

In short: do you think "ten items or less" is ungrammatical and should be "ten items or fewer"?

Less always sounds right to my ears, so while I'm aware of the alleged distinction, I don't make much of it. To further quote:

Less has always been used in English with counting nouns. Indeed, the application of the distinction between less and fewer as a rule is a recent phenomenon in linguistic terms. On this, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage notes:

As far as we have been able to discover, the received rule originated in 1770 as a comment on 'less' [...] Baker's remarks about 'fewer' express clearly and modestly – 'I should think,' 'appears to me' – his own taste and preference....Notice how Baker's preference has been generalized and elevated to an absolute status and his notice of contrary usage has been omitted."

Alfred the Great (the first king of England) was a prolific writer and translator of the time, and used "less" with counting nouns, e.g. around 888 AD

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Yes, usually.

...although I'm regretting it, now that I hear its origin. There are a number of grammatical rules which were pulled out of one random guy's ass that have been elevated to this absolute status, as one of the Wikipedia quotes describes, and I generally try to watch out for these. Now that I know this, I think I'm just going to use "less" all the time.

I took the "usually" option because I find it's generally clearer to use terms like "less" in a way that's technically correct in the most appropriate academic sense and it doesn't make much sense to say in a mathematical context that "7 is fewer than 10". I mean, sure, I guess you could be talking about number of units, e.g. "I have fewer Newtons of force than the Earth", and ultimately you could quantize just about anything, but this only serves to make inverse measures more confusing ("44,500 Hz is fewer than 22,500 Hz" is semantically correct) and offers poor equivalents to phrases like "the bowling ball has less potential energy" and "system A has less entropy than system B".

My conclusion thus far is that I'll stop worrying about "fewer", and only use it when it makes my meaning more clear.

[Pheidippides]

In writing? Yes. In speech? Not always. And while your article points out that it's not necessarily a rule of grammar, I agree with Baker that "less" just sounds better before mass nouns and "fewer" before count nouns.

Also, Tsukatu, I don't think "less potential energy" or "less entropy" go against the "rule" because you don't include the units by which you would quantize it, like the "less flour" in the example.

[29403]

Never ever ever, to be honest fewer is an awkward word