Timeline for 'less' is to 'fewer' as 'more' is to what?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 6, 2016 at 13:32 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Oct 6, 2016 at 13:49 | |||||
| Dec 21, 2011 at 22:16 | comment | added | nohat | @slim you should send Hal David a firmly worded letter then en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Less_Bell_to_Answer | |
| Sep 29, 2010 at 3:02 | comment | added | nohat | @Jason you misunderstand. It is not decided by what people say, such as usage writers or English teachers, but by what people do, by doing real analysis of large corpora of texts. | |
| Sep 29, 2010 at 1:47 | comment | added | Jason | @nohat - interesting argument, "correct usage is decided by users of the language, not by self-appointed arbiters of correctness." "users of the language": i guess "almost every usage writer" and "flocks of english teachers" (quoted from your MW source) don't count as users of the language, nor the students learning from these people. also, by "self-appointed arbiters of correctness" do you mean, um, dictionaries? i'll give you another try if you'd like. | |
| Sep 29, 2010 at 1:27 | comment | added | nohat | @I.J. I do fear I haven’t fully answered your question, or at least I haven’t fully made clear that I’m not claiming that there is no distinction to be made between less and fewer (there is a distinction between those words)—just that the matching superior comparator is more for both. | |
| Sep 29, 2010 at 1:13 | comment | added | I. J. Kennedy | @nohat, I read your answer to question 495 before asking this one. It's a good answer. You make a strong case that in real usage, there's not much difference between 'less' and 'fewer'. But some of us just can't bring ourselves to say 'less dogs'. | |
| Sep 29, 2010 at 0:31 | comment | added | Jason | @nohat Actually, if you check the New Oxford English dictionary, they are pretty clear on the rules: oxforddictionaries.com/page/150. There are also some pretty reputable sources denoting the difference here: grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/less-versus-fewer.aspx, and here: grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm, and other various places in style books and all over the internet. Now this becomes a religious debate: which dictionary is right? Yours because you say it is or mine because I say it is? Remember, a dictionary is written by people who have opinions too. | |
| Sep 28, 2010 at 23:48 | comment | added | nohat | @Jason, see my answer to a previous question about less/fewer for why your analysis is off the mark. | |
| Sep 28, 2010 at 20:50 | comment | added | Paul D. Waite | And if that doesn’t highlight the pointlessness of the less/fewer distinction, I don’t know what does. | |
| Sep 28, 2010 at 17:44 | history | edited | nohat | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 214 characters in body
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| Sep 28, 2010 at 17:11 | history | answered | nohat | CC BY-SA 2.5 |