this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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I choose to believe chestnuts are lazy.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

They're not interchangeable. 'Fewer' is for countable nouns and 'less' is for aggregate nouns, just like 'how many' and 'how much'.

E.g:

Aggregate:

"How much sand? Less sand."

Countable:

"How many grains of sand? Fewer grains of sand."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Along with that, I'll add in "number" vs "amount":

  • A shocking number of people get this wrong (countable)
  • The amount of confusion about it is distressing (aggregate)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh believe me, I know. I agree.

but the argument nowadays is that common usage dictates that both are now "acceptable", similar to how apparently "literally" now effectively means "figuratively" because everyone uses it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

We don’t have to accept it.