Fewer, not less

[Youdontneedacriminallawyer]

Fewer cakes, less cake.

It's not that difficult to get it right

What about bacteria?

I find bacteria interesting in adverts, eg "our new formula leaves even ... bacteria behind": because although it's a plural word, it acts like a mass noun. If I hear "fewer bacteria" I mentally insert "types of"; if I hear "less bacteria" I mentally insert "-l matter".

I'd say fewer bacteria in the same way as I'd say fewer animals, on the grounds that bacteria is the plural of bacterium, as animals is the plural of animal.

Fewer types of bacterium, surely. Though I'm ready to be corrected.

Fewer glasses, less wine.

Is it a fewer amount of glasses or just fewer glasses? Would you say a greater amount of glasses or just greater glasses?

Wuzzlefuzzle MORE wine!

You're my best friend. I love you, mate.

I learnt it that if it's something you can count, it's fewer.

Fewer cups of coffee, less coffee.

That's right Maria

Marina sorry

Fewer glasses, more glasses. (Or a greater number of glasses).

Or just drink straight from the bottle

So would you object to this sentence (seeing as cents and dollars are countable):

I plan to spend less than fifty cents on sweets and less than twenty dollars on drinks.

Ah HA! Here's where it gets interesting. No I wouldn't, because those don't count (no pun intended). The unspoken part of those sentences is "... worth of money". Just like "in two weeks' time..."

Somebody may come along with a more official explanation, complete with terminology...

I agree (although I read "less money than $20").

It's worth mentioning that you can always have "less than" a number of hours, pounds, months, dollars, kilograms, miles etc because although they count they also measure. $12.96 is "less than $20" but it certainly isn't "fewer than $20".

Agree with cabbage

It's less because it's "less [money][to spend] than ...". What you're really spending is money, not dollars.

You could absolutely say "I'm sure I had fewer dollars in this purse" (referring to the numbers of bills) or "I'm sure I had less money in this purse".

So you could say, "I have in my basket, an amount of shopping which is less than 5 items", or if you were omitting words (as above where "money" gets omitted), "I have in my basket, shopping which is less than 5 items" so... "I'm going to join the 'less than 5 items' queue - oh wait, some pedant insisted it be changed to 'fewer than 5 items'!"

I'm playing devil's advocate here in that although people like to claim that there is a hard and fast rule that fewer must be used with countables, usage and common sense shows that less is often perfectly acceptable.

Apparently, for centuries, writers including Alfred the Great and Alexander Pope used "less" with countables, until someone declared a rule in the eighteenth century. Lots more here: itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html

And of course, I should have said "usage and common sense show..." - sorry about my grammar lapse.

Dad - who says this?
"I have in my basket, an amount of shopping which is less than 5 items"

Everyone knows it refers to the number of items you have in your basket - do you have 5 items or more, or fewer than 5 items?

Who says it?

Maybe the same people who apparently say "I plan to spend less money than fifty cents" (which sounds odd to me) but don't say the word "money" out loud according to PedantMarina.

I did say I was playing devil's advocate, and was applying the logic to wonder if you could say "amount of shopping less than five items" but not say the "amount of shopping" bit out loud...

Here's the thing, I know the less/fewer rule (so-called) and apply it pretty strictly in my own writing (not so bothered about casual conversation), but I'm wondering why we need to be so strict about it since it's not always been a rule, it creates no ambiguity and it's not actually ungrammatical.

The source of the problem is that "few" lends itself to being made into a comparative adjective, whereas "many" doesn't, so we say "more" whether we're talking about more things or more of a substance. As far as I know it's relatively normal in other languages to have the same word for "less" and "fewer", though English isn't the only one that distinguishes.

Having said that I quite like "less" and "fewer" as they encourage people, however unconsciously, to think about the difference between natural numbers and real numbers (definitely unconsciously but I'm sure something like that is going on) which can only be a good thing. So roll on fewer- we can't have too much of it, IMHO.

What do you use for complex numbers?

I'm afraid in the mundane world of Chateau Prism time, money, shopping and so on are considered to be scalar quantities, so "fewer" and "less" are more than enough. But I'm quite attracted to the idea of counting children in complex numbers (especially daughters), as there's always an imaginary part.

Actually, I asked a trick question - you can't really put complex numbers in order: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_numbers#Ordering

I'm probably going to wish I spent less time and fewer brain-cells on this thread. Time to go...