Welcome to Grammar & Style Tidbits with Snap Language.
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[voiceover] “You’re gonna dig this!”
Hi, Marc Franco here.
English grammar, right?
“Write your answer in 100 words or less.”
You go to the store and see that sign for the fast lane: “15 items or less.”
Anything grammatically incorrect with these?
Hmm...
Well, according to grammar purists these are bad, bad, bad...
They sound right, though...
What’s wrong with them?
(I mean, what’s wrong with the sentences, not necessarily the grammar purists.)
/ Let’s see...
Many... much...
I have many books.
I don’t have much time to read them.
Many books... much time...
Cool.
You can count these...
1, 2, 3... many... many books.
How many books?
This is a mass noun.
Time...
Not “many times...” much time.
How much time?
John has more books than I do.
John has more time than I to read them.
Mary has the most books... and the most time to read them all.
Many... much More... the most.
Cool.
Whether it’s “many” or “much,”
the comparative and superlative forms are identical.
What if you don’t have a lot of something?
I have a few coins.
I have a little money.
(Well, I have little money.)
John has fewer coins than I do.
He has less money than I do.
Mary has the fewest coins.
Poor Mary has the least money.
You can count coins... few... fewer... the fewest.
This is a mass noun... little... less... the least money.
So, what’s the hot debate here?
Ah, yes.
“Write your answer in 100 words or less.”
Less words?
Wait.
You can count words.
It should be “in 100 words or fewer.”
What?!
That sounds weird, though!
But it’s correct, isn’t it?
So, should you say this?
“How far do you still have to go?”
“I have fewer than 5 miles to go.”
Now, wait a minute.
According to the standard grammar we’ve just seen,
this should be correct... right?
But it sounds kind of odd.
Okay.
Here’s the thing.
Units of distance (like, 10 miles, 5 meters, 100 lightyears)
are treated as an amount... not a number.
That’s why we say, “Ten miles is not far to drive.”
We say “is,” not “are.”
So, this should be “I have less than 5 miles to go.”
You can count miles (1, 2, 3 miles)...
But when talking about a distance, you’re not counting individual miles...
you’re looking at the distance as an amount.
I have less than... this amount... or distance to go.
How about money?
You can count money.
One dollar, 2 dollars, 3 dollars...
Well, same thing.
When you talk about a value, you see it as an amount,
not as a number of individual dollar bills.
That’s why you say, “5 dollars isn’t very expensive.”
“Isn’t” ... not “aren't.”
Just like distances, you look at this as a sum of money
So, you’d say,
“I want to spend less than 100 dollars” on something... or
“This costs $10 or less.”
(You couldn't say fewer here...)
Let’s see.
You have units of distance... sums of money...
Ah, yes!
Units of time and weight.
“You have less than 10 minutes left.”
“This weighs less than 5 pounds.”
Units of distance, sums of money, units of time and weight.
“Two hundred grams of sugar is enough.”
(Not “are.”
Oh...
Maybe less than 200 grams of sugar would be better, huh?
How about “15 items or less?”
They even have an online petition to change it to “fewer.”
Well, technically, you can count items, so it should be “fewer items.”
But are you using “15 items” as a number or as an amount?
It’s not a unit of time, money, distance... or anything like that.
But people do see it as an amount.
(Besides, they never count how many items they really have to use the fast lane.)
LOL
And this petition has zero supporters.
LOL
Would you say, “20 items is too much for the fast lane” or
“20 items are too many for the fast lane?”
That’s a philosophical question that’s been around
since they opened the first supermarket.
This person even wrote a blog post about it.
Yeah... but zero supporters and counting.
LOL
In formal writing, you may want to play it safe.
If you’re following the “countable versus mass noun” rule,
Use “fewer” for things you can count...
even if, intuitively, you take something to be an amount, not a number.
Standard grammar’s often at odds with our intuitive, internal grammar.
But remember the exceptions: units of time, money, distance, and weight.
Your intuition is fine there.
Those are always a mass or an amount, so use “less.”
If it doesn’t fall under any of these, play it safe and use “fewer”
even if it sounds a little stilted.
Or you can start an online petition to get rid of the “less” versus “fewer”
rule.
[pause]
LOL
Thank you!
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