More apples or less apples? (Grammatical Error in Heading in Year 1 homework)

[lingle]

DS2 has got numeracy homework to complete. The title at the top of the page is "More Apples or Less Apples".

Do I:

• stick a note on asking the teachers to feed back to the resource provider that there is a grammatical error? (They could head it "More or Less" to avoid the mistake. Later, the text uses correct language "is it more than the number on the tree or less than the number on the tree?")
• do nothing because it is a numeracy exercise not a literacy exercise?
• do nothing because Tesco stores now say "less+plural countable noun" on their advertising signs so perhaps the usage as moved on? I've also seen advertisements on TV saying things like "less emissions"

Sure, but life is full of nonsense, isn't it? I've seen Jesus saves written on plenty of things. But does that make it true?

It's not a literacy exercise, but the grammar should still be correct imo. I would put a note in, but am a pedant and this type of error drives me nuts. Am still annoyed that DS's English teacher does not appear to know the difference between discreet and discrete.

Now you've intrigued me, I have no idea what is wrong with that statement. Can you let me in on the secret? Grammar was not part of my education, though I've tried to pick it up since, especially since trying to help teach English as a foreign language and realising I needed to teach myself first. I lean towards pedantry and am sure I would have loved grammar as a child!

You can have less of one thing, less cake, less tomato sauce or less pepper. But you have fewer of many things, fewer apples or fewer strawberries. Please can I have fewer occasions where you bang on my door at four o'clock in the morning?

Depends whether is discrete or continuous

Less sand but fewer grains of sand
Less mess but fewer toys all ovr the floor

You could just get out more

You say to your son "Oh, that's odd, your sheet has a mistake on it. It should say fewer."

And you roll your eyes at the general deterioration in grammatical standards. Especially when you walk through the "nine items or less" till.

But you don't say anything to his teacher, because he/she will think you are nit-picking.

Many thanks all, I will remember this! Perhaps I should get out more! Or perhaps not, given the price of baby-sitting.

Hebiegebies -

Never learned grammar?

But, how else does one learn?

On the subject of nit-picking, don't the terms discrete and continuous suit statistical discussions more than grammatical ones? They are terms which relate to data.

well they do but we are discussing data items

People who have been taught grammar tend to know what a subjunctive and a predicate are. (And people who don't know what those are probably haven't.)

Yes, data item - to make the matter even more complicated!

I have learned grammar, but keep forgetting it. I constantly have to look up some things, e.g. what a predicate is.

I would just point it out to your dc and leave it at that. It would just embarrass the teacher, although I think it shows a lack of education on his/her part.

I think there's a difference between not knowing and not remembering. I've got a memory like a sieve too.

In maths you have more than signs and less than signs

7>3 7 (is more than) 3

3

I think they probably wanted to stick with 'more' and 'less' if it was used in the text as well - for consistency, rather than introduce 'fewer' (when it's a numeracy exercise not increasing vocabulary).

You could say something to the teacher but she'd probably just be . If you put this in pedants corner, you may get more support.

Startail, i'd imagine the op knows that but her question was about grammar

My daughter had homework a few years ago, and I wasn't sure whether to go and see the teacher. They were in year 4, and they had to put apostrophes in the right places. One question was 'the ladies brooch'.

That didn't make sense to me. One brooch surely can't belong to lots of ladies, so it should be 'the lady's brooch'. Or am I wrong?

Actually, having typed this, 'brooch' looks completely wrong! That is the correct spelling, isn't it?

Yes it's right, and you're correct that the only right way would be the ladies' brooch, which would imply some sort of timeshare jewellery arrangement :o

StealthPolarBear I think you mean "countable" or "uncountable" nouns (sugar, flour, sand, mess are uncountable, but words that refer to things you can count are countable, e.g. pencil/s, cloud/s, person/people, sheep/sheep).

I always assumed they meant the same thing, but OK

You don't have to count grains, of sand or anything else, to know whether or not you have more or fewer of them; you can simply weigh them. (I think the discrete and continuous terms are a complete red herring.)

It's simply a question of plural or singular. You have less sand but fewer grains of sand.