Can I be the guy that’s known around town for pointing out that in the given context, it’s actually “fewer users”
And yeah yeah, I know about evolution of language and common usage, and all that crap. But it really does just boil down to the fact that fewer sounds more elegant when the object is plural. ie: “There are usually fewer unexpected costs associated with new home ownership”, vs “There is usually less unexpected cost associated with new home ownership” (Both are correct in their given context)
It’s about how language rolls off the tongue. If we lose that we might as well grunt at each other draw pictographs with our own feces.
Yes. But in 99.9 percent of cases, it also happens to be plural, so my eternal hope is that if it can be grasped as “If there’s as ‘s’, use ‘fewer’”, maybe more people would get it.
This specific case isn’t really to do with the evolution of language, more just ineffective linguistic prescriptivism. Some guy 200 years ago decided they didn’t like how “less” had been used for the past millennium so they made up a guideline for what the preferred (like what you just said) then people decided to treat that as an actual rule. Obviously it’s still common to use “less” that way even after a couple of centuries of people trying to enforce that rule, it’s a good demonstration of how prescriptivism is a waste of time.
Strangely enough, in my experience many prescriptivists who rely on etymological arguments are fine with language changing for this one rule. Makes me think they never really did care about historic usage of a word.
Can I be the guy that’s known around town for pointing out that in the given context, it’s actually “fewer users”
And yeah yeah, I know about evolution of language and common usage, and all that crap. But it really does just boil down to the fact that fewer sounds more elegant when the object is plural. ie: “There are usually fewer unexpected costs associated with new home ownership”, vs “There is usually less unexpected cost associated with new home ownership” (Both are correct in their given context)
It’s about how language rolls off the tongue. If we lose that we might as well grunt at each other draw pictographs with our own feces.
/end of rant.
It’s actually about whether the object is countable.
Water -> less water Cups of water -> fewer cups of water
It bothers me a bit, too, but American English is definitely evolving to replace “fewer” with “less”.
Yes. But in 99.9 percent of cases, it also happens to be plural, so my eternal hope is that if it can be grasped as “If there’s as ‘s’, use ‘fewer’”, maybe more people would get it.
This specific case isn’t really to do with the evolution of language, more just ineffective linguistic prescriptivism. Some guy 200 years ago decided they didn’t like how “less” had been used for the past millennium so they made up a guideline for what the preferred (like what you just said) then people decided to treat that as an actual rule. Obviously it’s still common to use “less” that way even after a couple of centuries of people trying to enforce that rule, it’s a good demonstration of how prescriptivism is a waste of time.
Strangely enough, in my experience many prescriptivists who rely on etymological arguments are fine with language changing for this one rule. Makes me think they never really did care about historic usage of a word.
It all just comes down to preference, but what a lot of people prefer is being able to express slightly different concepts clearly.