To think that grammar matters and to ring Tesco to berate them for their "Same luxury, less lorries" sticker on my loo roll?

[SmiteYouWithThunderbolts]

As the title says really... As if "10 Items or Less" wasn't infuriating enough, Tesco have now extended this to proudly proclaiming that they use LESS lorries to transport their packs of loo roll.

I would like to ring them just to scream the word "FEWER" down the phone at them.

It does matter, doesn't it? Ok, so perhaps in forums and private emails it matters less if there are a handful of errors here and there, but on advertising and packaging from a national supermarket chain, AIBU to expect them to at least use the correct words?

Did that bit of packaging really make it through every level of their massive marketing department without a single person pointing out the erroneous use of "less"? Or was it a conscious decision because... well... Nope, I cannot fathom the logic of why anyone would knowingly use the wrong word.

This actually made me cross enough to take a photo of the offending item and tweet it to Tesco. That was maybe slightly U of me.

Hmm, I dunno about the unique example, it's hardly an obscure or difficult to grasp concept and there are other terms such as rare or unusual which could be used.

For me incorrect use of 'unique ' points only to an impoverished vocabulary

nothing can be a bit unique, it's a logical impossibility, like a square circle.

It's black and white
There are no shades of grey

'At all' is fine though to my ear which means bugger all

I'm not going away at all.

Are you going away at all?

Hairdressers are NOT to be corrected, they are to be agreed with and held very close in case they run away

But it's like the question 'how pregnant are you/ is she?' Well either you are or you're not! Pregnancy is what pregnancy does and you can't be a but pregnant. Same thing for the going away for me!

Bit not but

Pedant alert: less than half price could mean 40% off. It's less than half. It's not clear to pedants whether the less refers to the half or the ultimate price.

The problem I guess is how to be accurate but also catchy?

No, Quangle, that would be "less than half off". Less than half price is blindingly obviously less than half the price it was before. No one complained, did they?? Better than half is just stoopid.

No you cannot be a 'bit unique'! You are either unique or you're not.

I was on the phone to Virgin recently, and the lady kept saying 'I know you've wrote in..' I let it go for the first 3 times,then every time she said 'You've wrote in' I blurted out 'I've written in', 'I've WRITTEN in' and she kept stopping, then carrying on. Not sure she got it.

You can certainly be a bit unique, obviously in the core mathematical principle of uniqueness you cannot, but as we saw above with less than the mathematical principles are not all that matters.

This is what the OED say on the matter:
"Words like unique have a core sense but they often also have a secondary, less precise sense: in this case, the meaning ‘very remarkable or unusual’, as in a really unique opportunity. In its secondary sense, unique does not relate to an absolute concept, and so the use of submodifying adverbs is grammatically acceptable."

So like less and fewer above, the actual organisations who document and defend grammar say it's fine, but the pedants seem to argue. Why?