OT - Just something to spark conversation
Posted: 24 Apr 2012 14:44I thought some people would enjoy debating whether this is correct:
QUOTE
A Supermarket Sign Which Reads '10 Items Or Less' Should Not Make a Reasonable Person Cry
Many people claim that supermarket checkout signs should actually read "10 Items Or Fewer" and that a sign that reads "10 Items Or Less" is incorrect, and a sign of a poor education or low breeding.
"Why don't you just scrawl it on the floor in feces?"
This stems from a widely taught old rule which basically states that the word less should be restricted to describing items which aren't countable, as in:
"Please pour less hot wax in my underpants."
That makes grammatical sense, because 'wax' doesn't really have any obvious units that are countable. When dealing with items which are countable, the word fewer should be used:
"Please pour fewer fire ants in my underpants."
The problem with that is that it ignores the billions of times less has been used to describe countable things throughout English history. Although the excitable grammar people are correct that using fewer in place of less rarely makes sense, swapping less in for fewer almost always results in an unobjectionable sentence. And indeed, when we look at historical usage, this use of less to describe countable objects goes way back, to at least 1481. Considering the difficulty in determining whether some objects are countable or not, and the fact that more doesn't have to put up with any of this bullshit, it would seem that English speakers have been using less more or less however they felt like for a few hundred years now, and we still haven't even come close to living through the more interesting parts of The Road Warrior yet.
END QUOTE
This comes from http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-commonly- ... -mistakes/
QUOTE
A Supermarket Sign Which Reads '10 Items Or Less' Should Not Make a Reasonable Person Cry
Many people claim that supermarket checkout signs should actually read "10 Items Or Fewer" and that a sign that reads "10 Items Or Less" is incorrect, and a sign of a poor education or low breeding.
"Why don't you just scrawl it on the floor in feces?"
This stems from a widely taught old rule which basically states that the word less should be restricted to describing items which aren't countable, as in:
"Please pour less hot wax in my underpants."
That makes grammatical sense, because 'wax' doesn't really have any obvious units that are countable. When dealing with items which are countable, the word fewer should be used:
"Please pour fewer fire ants in my underpants."
The problem with that is that it ignores the billions of times less has been used to describe countable things throughout English history. Although the excitable grammar people are correct that using fewer in place of less rarely makes sense, swapping less in for fewer almost always results in an unobjectionable sentence. And indeed, when we look at historical usage, this use of less to describe countable objects goes way back, to at least 1481. Considering the difficulty in determining whether some objects are countable or not, and the fact that more doesn't have to put up with any of this bullshit, it would seem that English speakers have been using less more or less however they felt like for a few hundred years now, and we still haven't even come close to living through the more interesting parts of The Road Warrior yet.
END QUOTE
This comes from http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-commonly- ... -mistakes/
I think those of us who'd be in the midst of it are just too busy right now to engage. But it was amusing nonetheless!