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Post by goofy on Jun 4, 2008 3:09:13 GMT
I'm surprised no-one else seems to render the rule as "use less with numbers", not even goofy's beloved MWDEU. It does, it says " less is as likely as or more likely than fewer to appear in a few common constructions. One of the most frequent is the less than construction where less is a pronoun. The countables in this construction are often distances, sums of money, units of time and statistical enumerations, which are often thought of as amounts rather than numbers." and " Less is also frequent when it follows a number" and "of course it follows one".
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 4, 2008 3:10:52 GMT
... yet turning it around to "one member fewer" sounds - to my ear - perfectly okay. Because you've moved the word away from one. Because members is countable the word tends to fewer as the influence of one (which, by Doherty's Rule, likes less) wanes!
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 4, 2008 3:16:41 GMT
The countables in this construction are often distances, sums of money, units of time and statistical enumerations, which are often thought of as amounts rather than numbers." That explanation is that they are "thought of as amounts rather than numbers", not my explanation. "Less than 30 seconds" is explained as really meaning "less [time] than 30 seconds" and time is non-countable. I'd say it's the stated "30" not the unstated "time" that matters. Aha! I may have to buy a copy! Does it regard "English" as including British English, or does it just cover American usage?
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Post by goofy on Jun 4, 2008 13:38:15 GMT
Aha! I may have to buy a copy! Does it regard "English" as including British English, or does it just cover American usage? It covers both American and British English. It doesn't have much to say about Canadian and Australian.
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 4, 2008 13:44:11 GMT
Very good. Thank you, goofy.
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Post by SusanB on Jun 4, 2008 20:02:01 GMT
I'm trying hard, but I can't like 'less' when it sounds like it ought to be 'fewer'.
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Post by Twoddle on Jun 4, 2008 22:09:41 GMT
I'm trying hard, but I can't like 'less' when it sounds like it ought to be 'fewer'. I'm not trying at all. I like the distinction between "less" and "fewer"; it's one of the quirky bits of English that enrich the language, and I shall continue to use it and to correct those I consider have got it wrong.
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Post by goofy on Jun 4, 2008 22:34:46 GMT
I'm trying hard, but I can't like 'less' when it sounds like it ought to be 'fewer'. My point is that it is part of the English used by many writers of English. The prescription against it arose from someone's opinion in 1770, but it was always and continues to be part of standard English. It can be found as far back as 888. But, no one says you need to like it.
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Post by Dave M on Jun 5, 2008 7:33:20 GMT
I'm with you on that, goofy - I think it's fine to use whichever sounds best (as a general "rule" in English), but we run into difficulty when people decide that there's a particular underlying rule governing what sounds best, and then try to enforce that rule (producing what sounds wrong).
"Fewer people attended the meeting this year" is fine: no-one is likely to object to how it sounds, and the attachment of "fewer" to "people" is clear.
"Less than nine people attended the meeting this year", though, is fine by me. I'd ask those insisting on "fewer" to consider whether "less" attaches to "people" or to "than nine". After all, eight is a lesser number than nine, not a fewer number than nine.
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Glyn
Bronze
Posts: 87
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Post by Glyn on Jun 5, 2008 19:44:19 GMT
eight is a lesser number than nine
Interesting use of "lesser", Dave. I think I'd only use it, in a more qualitative sense, to mean "of less importance/significance", as in "lesser fry" and "the lesser dignitaries", preferring (despite their potential ambiguity) "smaller" or "lower" in your example - but certainly not "fewer", which can scarcely be linked to the singular noun "number". Following your advice to use whichever sounds best - irrespective of moribund conventions - I still cling to the distinction between "less traffic" and "fewer vehicles" but I'm sure that it won't be long before "fewer" disappears from the scene, totally supplanted by "less".
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Post by Pete on Jun 5, 2008 20:12:42 GMT
I'm trying hard, but I can't like 'less' when it sounds like it ought to be 'fewer'. I'm not trying at all. I like the distinction between "less" and "fewer"; it's one of the quirky bits of English that enrich the language, and I shall continue to use it and to correct those I consider have got it wrong. I agree. Even if there are no hard and fast rules, it feels right and I will continue to distinguish.
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Post by GraceCourt on Jun 5, 2008 20:57:20 GMT
Facebook says, when someone leaves a group, "one fewer member" - which just sounds downright weird to me. It might sound weird to you, but it sounds correct to me. I'm delighted to see that people still do care about getting less/fewer (and, correspondingly, much/many) correct!
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Post by GraceCourt on Jun 5, 2008 21:04:23 GMT
Oh, and just while I'm on...
I hard to think long and hard about the new BMW advertisement... "less emissions..."! But I think it's correct - if you regard the fact that the polluting emissions are different chemicals (carbon monoxide, carbon particulates, nitrogen dioxide, etc.), and think of the quantity of these pollutants all mixed together as being innumerable, then "less emissions" is correct.
If it was stated to be "fewer emissions", that would suggest that one or more of the polluting compounds was no longer present in the exhaust: the total "count" of the number of these having reduced - which isn't, as I understand it, what they are trying to claim credit for.
(Then again, maybe the production company's copywriters really are stupid and they got it correct by accident... I've just seen the Dettol "one bacteria" advertisement and I'm feeling depressed!)
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Post by Dave M on Jun 6, 2008 8:04:40 GMT
> I've just seen the Dettol "one bacteria" advertisement and I'm feeling depressed!) <
Yes! I spotted that last night (something like "within hours, one bacteria can turn into thousands ..."). One the spectrum of acceptance, where agenda and opera ARE accepted singulars, and data sits somewhere in the middle, I'd stick that well to the other end - NOT acceptable!
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 6, 2008 8:59:21 GMT
I'm sure I hear a bacteria far more frequently than I hear this data. Occasionally I hear this datum, but ever so much more rarely do I hear a bacterium. The (mis)use of data as a singular I can (almost, just, barely) live with, but a bacterium is a sadly diseased form of language use.
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