Less or fewer?

[MrsHathaway]

Sunday Times Good Universities Guide says that there are "fewer than five applicants per place" at a particular university. In the fact box the ratio is given as 4.9:1.

I'm not happy. There are fewer applicants per place than at another institution on the same page (11.9:1) and fewer applicants (16355) than 5:1 would be (16775) ...

But it's obviously less than five applicants per place, surely. 4.9 is less than five and 4 is fewer than five.

Interesting one.

It looks like the writer was aware of the convention that you use fewer rather than less for countable objects such as applicants, but I think what you are pointing out is that the quantity is not "applicants" but "applicants per place" which is an average and can vary continuously. So it would be right to say "less applicants per place".

Even though that logic seems sound to me, there's a little irrational part of me that hears "less applicants..." and thinks it should be "fewer". But I'm happy for my lizard-brain pedant to be trumped by my monkey-brain pedant.

Yes, it's a case where both sound wrong. "Under" might work.

The less/fewer distinction is syntactic but feels semantic.

Yes but there is never actually 0.9 of an applicant, is there? So the applicants are always countable.

To me fewer is more correct as it's about the applicants, but it's troublesome.

I'd probably change the sentence if I were writing it to talk about a lower ratio or what have you.

But you can have 0.9 applicants per place. So if one institution has 0.9 applicants per place, and one has 0.8 applicants per place then it is right to say that the latter has an application rate that is less.

Just as if car A has a lower speed than car B, you could say A is doing less miles per hour than B. Miles per hour is like applicants per place, a mathematically derived rate that can vary continuously and can be used in comparisons.

Jassy - like me, I think your monkey brain pedant is tempted to rewrite the sentence to keep the lizard brain pedant happy.

You can count decimal points, so it's fewer.

I would correct "less miles" if I were marking.

I always tell my students that if an "s" can go on a noun, (ergo, if there is a plural form, obviously including irregulars like children) then it's fewer.

To get into the nuances of sub-meanings is to read something into a sentence that the writer probably didn't intend.

If I remember rightly, it is all too do with whether the noun is countable or uncountable. In this case, fewer is correct (one applicant, two applicants, three applicants etc) as the noun is countable.
If we are looking at an uncountable nouns, for example rice (we can't say one rice, two rices etc) then less is correct.

I think you've ignored the point that the OP made and I discussed further. Yes, "applicants" is a countable noun, but that is not the noun being used here - it is "applicants per place" which is a rate and not countable. The fact that the quantity can take non-integer values shows that less is appropriate.

This Oxford dictionary link argues that you would say "X is less than five miles away" and not use fewer, disagreeing with your "nouns ending in s" rule. It would be interesting to hear how much people agree with the specific arguments set out in the link. (I don't agree with it all). I think saying "X is less miles from here than Y" is acceptable but interesting to hear views.

blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/08/less-or-fewer/
The discussion on miles is at the end.

(There are two current discussions on PC about less / fewer and someone posted that link there).

I haven't ignored the point the OP made. Or the subsequent ones. And I read the Oxford links (among others) a few months back when less/fewer was discussed.

When you start to read sub-texts, which may, or may not be the writer's intention, then of course, the syntax might be changeable.

The point however, is that the quote from the OP, is perfectly correct. The subsequent hypotheses are another question entirely. "fewer" refers to applicants, not to places. It's really quite simple.

Less miles, however, would always be wrong.

Fear not though, "fewer" will be one of the next lexical items to be considered fairly obsolete.

I'm not basing my argument on any subtext or guesswork about what the author intended.

You say "fewer" should be used with the noun "applicants". I agree. Where we disagree is that here the the writer is not using the noun "applicants" but "applicants per place" where "less" is appropriate (to get mathematical, applicants per place can take any rational value and so is a dense set on the number line).

So the OP thought that the ST quote was wrong, and I agreed. (Although we both agreed that there is a residual discomfort hearing an expression that starts "less applicants...").

Sense trumps Mathematics (though I suppose this is Pedants' Corner...). Unless you are dealing with amputees, you don't get 0.9 of an applicant. So it makes sense to say that there are fewer than five applicants per place.

HOWEVER, you could say and maybe should, to keep everyone happy the number or rate of applicants per place is less than five.

Sangria I agree that "fewer" should just be done away with.

But I disagree with you about the definition of a count noun, although I can see it's a useful rule for small children.

Another example of problematic plurals would be when adverts claim their product will result in "98% less bacteria on your sponge", for example. Bacteria are plural, yes, but in two ways: multiple organisms, and multiple species. I'm not sure whether I'd rather have 2% each of 50 different types of bacteria, or 100% of only one type.

I'd go with "an average of less than 5 applicants per place" to dodge the issue.

But you're right, they are not talking about an integer, where 'fewer' is the right word, they are talking about a real number. And that's the same with the percentage - it isn't 98 of something it's a way of saying 0.98 of something, so it isn't an integer, and is therefore 'less' rather than 'fewer' is the right way to describe it.