Grammar

less vs. fewer

One is for things you count. The other is for things you measure. You picked wrong.

  • We need less meetings.

    We need fewer meetings.

    You can have three meetings. Tragically.

  • Fewer traffic on the 405 today.

    Less traffic on the 405 today.

    Nobody has ever counted out four traffics.

  • There were less people than last year.

    There were fewer people than last year.

    This is the one everybody notices.

The test

Put a number in front of it. If it survives, it's fewer.

Three emails, three bugs, three people. Three waters, three traffics, three patiences. One of those lists is fine and one of them is nonsense, and now you know which is which.

That's the whole fucking rule.

Before you argue

Yes, there are exceptions. No, none of them cover you.

  • Time, money, distance, weight take less. Less than two hours. Less than $500. Less than five miles.
  • One less thing, never one fewer thing. Nobody talks like that.
  • Percentages take less. Less than 40 percent is a proportion, not a pile.
  • Bare numbers take less. Less than 20 is fine. Less than 20 people is what we're here about.

Same split for amount and number: amount of water, number of bottles.

In fairness

The rule is younger than it acts. Some guy in 1770 wrote that "fewer" struck him as more elegant, and everyone downstream has treated one man's preference as scripture ever since.

So no, "10 items or less" isn't a crime. It's just wrong in a way that a specific kind of asshole cannot stop noticing, and you are now on a first-name basis with one.