Timeline for Is it "fewer than one person" or "less than one person"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 14, 2013 at 22:49 | vote | accept | Dan Tao | ||
| Feb 14, 2013 at 2:34 | comment | added | Jon Hanna | Of course, I didn't say what my own opinion was on the cases where less isn't ambiguous. Personally, I'd give that tweet less than ten out of ten, rather than fewer than ten out of ten. | |
| Feb 13, 2013 at 20:08 | comment | added | Jon Hanna | "There's too much cat in this soup. Less of it please. Less cat." is using cat as a mass noun, not as a singular count noun. It's the same rule I mentioned above, phrased badly. (I'm not sure if that's deliberate or not; certainly the example is aiming at humour; cat is considered unwelcome in soup in any quantity, by most Londoners). | |
| Feb 13, 2013 at 19:58 | comment | added | Dan Tao | Nice—great answer, thanks. For what it's worth, here's what prompted the question: a tweet claiming the distinction is along singular/plural lines. To be fair, judging from the conversation, the author appears to consider this more a useful rule of thumb than a law. | |
| Feb 13, 2013 at 19:41 | comment | added | livresque | A mnemonic I made up for the distinction helped a lot of my students. "You don't use "less" when you can add an 's.'" Reductive, I know, but it helped a lot of struggling students. | |
| Feb 13, 2013 at 18:35 | history | answered | Jon Hanna | CC BY-SA 3.0 |