Welcome back my lovely English learners, less and fewer do
these two words confuse you.
Take a look at these two sentences.
We have fewer apples in the basket.
We have less apples in the basket.
What do you think?
Which one is the correct sentence?
Less and fewer always confuse English students.
It's the most common English mistake I have come across.
Why is it so easy to get confused with less and fewer before I explain
you how to use them correctly?
There are certain things you should keep in mind.
Both these words represent the opposite of more.
Meaning that something is not in sufficient quantity as required.
First.
Let's understand the use of fewer.
He ate less cookies than his sister.
Now this is an incorrect sentence, but why is that?
So why can't use less in this sentence, cookies in this
sentence is accountable noun.
You can count cookies 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on.
So with countable nouns, we always and always use few.
And not less, he ate fewer cookies than his sister.
I hope that's clear and easy to understand.
On the other hand, Les is used with uncountable nouns.
He drank less milk than his sister.
Can you count milk?
No, we can't.
It's an uncountable noun saying he drank fewer milk than his sister
would be grammatically incorrect.
We always use less with uncountable nouns, always use fewer with accountable
nouns and less with uncountable nouns.
Now let's understand the use of less and fewer in context with money time, wait
and percentages to start with money.
RIA has less than $20 left in her bank account.
Now you might wonder why have I yeast less?
And not fewer in this sentence, even though there is a number 20 before
dollars, which makes it accountable now, although we can count money by its
units of currency, but when we think of money, we consider it as a bulk quantity.
It would be wrong to say RIA has fewer than $20 left in her bank account.
It would sound awkward and grammatically incorrect to your reader or listener.
That's the first exception while using less and fewer.
Now the use of less and fewer with time, Ryan has been at his
job for less than five years.
I wish I could spend less hours on social media.
Do you think using fewer in these two sentences will be correct?
The first sentence Ryan has been at his job for less than five years here,
we are talking about a time period.
Although we can count time in seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, years, and so on.
We always use less with time.
It's another exception.
The question is, can I replace less with fewer in these two sentences?
Well, yes you can, but it will depend on how general or specific your reference
to time is in the first sentence.
Five years is more specific, but not exact five years.
In the second sentence, fewer hours, again is more specific.
We are defining the time by hours.
Hence you can use fewer in this sentence and it won't sound incorrect.
Always.
Remember if it's a general statement, use less and for specific statements,
use fewer now using less than fewer with weight on average, baby's way
less than 3.5 kilograms at birth.
Weights are also nouns that can be measured.
And in a way accountable, we use fewer with countable nouns.
You learnt that earlier, but although we can count weight in grams and kilograms,
it's awkward to say on an average baby's way, fewer than 3.5 kilograms at.
This again is an exception with weights.
We always use less and not fewer, and finally using less and fewer
with percentages fewer than 8% of the world's people have blue eyes.
Now, this one is a bit tricky to understand.
Let me make it simpler for you to decide whether to use fewer
or less with a percentage.
You will have to look at the bigger picture and ask yourself.
What is this a percentage of, is it countable or uncountable?
Can we count the world's population?
It's a difficult task, but we can count people.
Therefore, 8% of world's people is countable and fewer is
the correct word to use here.
Take a look at another sentence.
I see you have eaten less than 10% of your pastor here.
We have used less.
Now it would not be possible to measure the uneaten percentage of pastor.
Therefore it makes it uncountable.
Hence we have used less.
I know it can be tricky sometimes to figure out which to use less or fewer.
Here's an helpful tip.
Keeping aside the exceptions.
Use fewer when you mean not as many and less when you mean not as much.
I hope this lesson helped you clear the confusion between less and fewer.
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