Woah! John Lewis in Grammar SHOCK.

[ChaosTrulyReigns]

Who would have thought?

Never knowingly ungrammatical.

Good God what is the world coming to?

I know some of us love to make this fine distinction between countable and uncountable quantities, but who says there's a hard and fast rule about "less" and "fewer"? Your fussy English teacher? Some grammar "expert" with a book to sell? I no longer think it's such a big deal, and I gather it's not something historically that all English writers have observed. blog.oup.com/2008/02/usage/

On the other hand, I am a bit irritated by the logic of the sentence. "You can try on up to three items" is enough to convey that the number of items you can try on is 1, 2, or 3. It doesn't make sense to add "or less" or "or fewer" - that's like saying "you can try on up to three items, or up to two items, or up to one item" = "you can try 1, 2, or 3 items, or you can try 1 or 2 items, or you can try 1 item". Unnecessary verbiage!

Surely up to three items means one or two? I agree the or fewer less is superfluous.

I'll carry on with the pedantry.

'Can' rather than 'may' implies that the customer is able to try on clothing, whereas 'may' means they have permission.

Tut tut, so many errors in such a vitally important 15 word notice. At the very least, the author should be hung, drawn and quartered.

Will John Lewis survive after this disaster ? Who knows

@DadDadDad I do grind my teeth at the '10 items or less' queue at the supermarket, but there are certainly some situations where 'or fewer' would sound definitely wrong.

For example, if referring to money or weight.

This is because these have sub-units - so, in the case of '£10 or less,' a smaller amount wouldn't necessarily be a lower quantity of 'fewer' exact pounds, but might be a 'lesser' amount of £7.63.