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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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Recently I've started to think that these and other similar battles are lost.
It just feels so petty. Not a single person reading "less cops" was confused by its meaning. I get fighting against misuse of your/you're, its/it's, etc. because they can make things harder to read. Fewer and less, though, have the exact same underlying meaning (a reduction).
Your write. Choose you're battle wisely
I'm something of a grammar Nazi, but just like I support letting "whom" die, "less" and "fewer" might as well just be interchangeable. There's no loss of language utility in doing so, unlike "literally"'s tragic demise.
Ah don't let whom die. It's a really good lesson in subject vs object.
Literally has been used for emphasis, hyperbole, and metaphor since at least the late 18th century.
I'm aware, but it was done so sparingly, as opposed to being used to mean its opposite far more than its original meaning nowadays.
That is how language works. It starts off small, then it catches on over time, and after a long time has passed, it either gets filtered out, or it becomes commonly used. The case for literally being used, for reasons other than its original one, started a couple hundred years ago. Today it is super commonly used that way, as it didn't get abandoned. You are mad at the nature of the beast.
I thought it meant cops should lose weight so there's less of them overall.
Can we at least stop allowing people to use 'of' instead of 'have'?
It doesn't make any sense and I need to read the sentence twice to understand what they're saying.
This one isn't even real. "Fewer" can only refer to countable things, but "less" can refer to both countable and uncountable things, and has been used that way for hundreds of years. It has never been wrong to say "less."
They aren't "lost", because they were never yours to be "fighting" in the first place..
I’m a grammar loving curmudgeon. Even I check myself more often than not after I realized the kind of classist tones that come through when arguing against lexicon.
Me trying to get people to say they "are doing well" not "doing good" when asked "how are you doing?"
Tracy Jordan says it best in 30 Rock -"No, Superman does good. You're doing well."
"I'm doing goodly."
Eh, I'll take it
What if you caught me in the middle of doing good works?
Language prescriptivism is a useless endeavour, let the language evolve as it wants, I personally don't mind the use of less in this situation
I actually kind of disagree in this context. Less is sharper and more readable while conveying the same meaning. The grammar books might say it’s technically incorrect, but I think it was the right word to use here.
Ahh, I went on a rant about this, and someone already did it for me much more concisely.
Yeah, they used less words
It took fewer time, too.
Why?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/fewer-vs-less
Essentially, fewer is normally used for discrete numbers of things (e.g. "fewer apples", "fewer boats", or "fewer cops") while less is used for amounts (e.g. "less water", "less sand", or "less money").
As noted in the above link, there are exceptions. However, the exceptions listed are all with "than" or "or" added. Specifically, it's pointing put that while "fewer items" is correct, "3 items or less" is also considered correct.
In the case of the sign, it is referring to the specific number of officers in the city, so it should use "fewer". Does it matter? No, not really. Why did I bother saying anything? I got a chance to rep grammar and quote Stannis Baratheon at the same time.
Good to know. Thanks