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(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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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.