Let's say you're living the dream and writing a chapter of word problems for a grade school math textbook. You've got a girl named Mandy who has sixteen apples. You've got a guy named Frank who has four fewer apples than Mandy.
Wait. Is it four fewer or four less?
Let's discuss, shall we?
Are Less and Fewer Interchangeable?
Less and fewer are often portrayed as interchangeable in the blogosphere, but although they both mean the opposite of more, I can assure you that they are not the same.
When to Use Fewer
Fewer is used in the context of nouns that you can count. You can have fewer spoons, fewer shoes, and fewer books than your roommate.
Mandy has a lot of apples, but she has fewer oranges than Frank.
When to Use Less
Less is used in the context of mass nouns. You can have less carpet, less clothing, or less Gatorade than your cousin.
She's sad because when they juice their oranges, she'll have less juice to drink.
Fewer vs. Less: Errors in the Wild
That classic ten items or less sign in the grocery store? It's wrong. You know that it's wrong because while you're waiting in line, you're counting the items that the person in front of you is unloading onto the belt, and if you can count them, it should be fewer.
Where else have you seen blatant fewer vs. less errors? Let me know in the comments.
PRACTICE
Write about “That Person” in the ten items or less line.
Maybe That Person is your protagonist. Maybe he or she is behind this annoying human being, or maybe he or she's observing the chaos from the safety of another lane. Describe the contents of That Person's cart using less and fewer correctly.
Take fifteen minutes (or fewer) to tell the story. When you're done, post your practice in the comments, and take some time to comment on your fellow writers' work.
This is how I remember few and less:
Few = you and you and you (countable)
Less= is a guess (not countable)
Nice! I love it when there are little tricks that make remembering forgettable lessons easier. Thanks.
Yeah me too. You said it for me Christelle. In fact, when I need to remember things I try to make up rhymes for them, like ML’s. My mind seems to retain them better that way.
I like your method.
You and you and you can be counted so they are few. But when the you and you and you becomes a crowd they become less, because you guess at how many there are in the crowd. That crowd has less people than the crowd around the corner.
Yes, I like it.
Thanks! That’s really helpful.
Learning a new thing every day! Thank you!
I wasn’t sure exactly what time it was, but I knew I had less time to get to my card game than I’d had when I entered the store. I’d been running late all morning. I grabbed a few things, grapes, strawberries, and a container of fresh pineapple pieces. Would that be enough? Susan was supposed to be on a diet and should be eating less than usual, but sometimes, even when she was on a diet, she ate more than all the rest of us put together. I grabbed some Pepperidge Farm cookies tossed them in the cart, and headed for the checkout line, the fast lane, the less than twenty items lane. Well what, (or should I say whom), do you suppose cut right in front of me, pushing her cart like a lawn mower, but a woman with a cart containing more items than the law allows. I hoped the cashier would point out the sign that said fewer than twenty items, but I knew that hope was futile. The cashier looked at the pile of things, looked at the woman, looked at me, and frowned. The woman started piling her hoard on the counter and the cashier, still frowning and now maybe muttering a little, started to pass the things under the scanner. They moved so quickly that I couldn’t count the items and I really didn’t want to because I knew that would only make me more angry. Let them be mad I thought, I will not be any less angry if I dwell on this injustice, and fewer smiles make for a shorter life.
Hey Marianne, that’s a good use of fewer and lesser. I was wondering if you wanted to have a big bang ending though… instead of the politically correct one you have now. I like the line “Susan should be eating less than usual, but sometimes, even when she was on a diet, she ate more than all the rest of us put together.”
I think I wrote this after I read the stuff from the day before about things we hate, and so I was kind of combining the two topics (with the thing I hate not being the person with too much stuff in the fast lane) and trying to look on the bright side. In what I wrote above the expected ending would have been to have a confrontation between the narrator and the person who is illegally in the line, but I know that I usually don’t say anything to people like that and so if is more realistic for my protagonist to not say anything. If it were part of a longer work I might have several of those kind of situation where she is treated rudely but doesn’t defend herself and then either blows up or doesn’t blow up or finds some other resolution.
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“What is your problem, matey!” Morrigan spat out the words to the old fella behind her in the queue.
” I was just remarking, young lady that you seem to have more than the specified 10 items for this queue,” Mr Wildrew was not going to be attacked by some young creature. He was always polite and always precise, to be less than that, just wouldn’t do.
“Ah, go tek a hike yer crusty old fart, I be needing all this, an’ I’ve no time to be messin’ in the proper queue, freak.” Morrigan stood her ground.
Mr Wildrew sighed, “Mary, it is Mary, underneath all that… What is that? It’s hardly make up, it is so theatrical. Mary, what happened to you? I have had a few children pass through my door, I remember you though. So bright, articulate, Mary?”
“Oh, it’s you Mr Wildrew, never cogged it were you. Mam’s sick again, an’ she ‘ad another five after me. I ‘ate it ‘Wills’, really ‘ate it.”
Mr Wildrew sighed again, thinking of the mother and her drug infused mind, of the few men he’d seen and imagined the others too.
The check out operator started to tell Mary to go to another queue, Mary was having none of it and the row was getting louder.
Mr Wildrew stepped forward and spoke quietly, “The young lady is with me and kindly offered to pay for some of mine, you’ll see between us we have a lot fewer than twenty,” he smiled at Morrigan Mary, queen of the crows and she, the little girl Mary, under all the barriers smiled back.
They walked out together and shared a pot of tea in the café on the corner. Both enjoyed the moments spent together.
Love the colloquialisms Suzie! I understand them totally, is that because I’m of English stock too? Not sure. But they made me laugh.
Ya, I keep coming out with English, and then ruin it with Irish in it or the other way round. Mary is actually from SW Ireland, hence the Morrigan, just trying to put her in different places to see how she copes.
That was funny and cute. Mary sounds like a rather angry teacher but maybe her old teacher cheered her up over tea.
I like the poignancy of this one. And the colloquailisms are simply wonderful. Suzie, you have Mary Morrigan and Mr. Wildrew drawn so well!
I fume inwardly. Silently, I hope. The woman ahead of me in line, clucking over her basket has been arguing with the checkout girl for ten minutes. Over whether she has fewer than twelve items in her basket. Anyone can see she has twenty-ish items and that she is less the amount of brainage required to count them.
like it, clucking like a hen over eggs.
I hate people like that! Once I added one of my items to their 12 and they never realize it. So I ended up with one less item, but hell, I really didn’t need the eggs.
Or is it “didn’t really need”? Which is correct?
Thanks for sharing this post!
Mrs. Puttusamy ‘s cut to the front of the supermarket checkout line again! As usual! Rolling over people’s feet, pushing and shoving! Natasha the cashier can’t think of anyone else Mrs. Puttusamy’s age with less dignity and fewer special offers in her cart!
Mrs. Puttusamy is Natasha’s embarassing Tuesday problem. Tuesday is Senior Citizens day at the Union Co-op when they all get 4% off. It’s also the day for the ‘Special Edition 100 Buy One Get One Free’ promotions. The promotions are usually small things the market get’s as incentives from it’s distributors – cotton buds, toothbrushes, tea-towels. Sure the offers could be more attractive. The Senior’s discount could be bigger too. But these days, when inflation’s forcing everyone to do with less, it’s no problem for Mrs. Geetha Putthusamy to wake up earlier, do with a few minutes less sleep and come in to check out all the Special 100’s before they’re gone.
Mrs. Puttusamy’s managed to pick up every one of the 100 things on offer, including the last two packets of wet-wipes and the one-on-one-on-one for nail polish remover, three bottles for the price of one! What she’s going to do with so much nail polish remover Natasha can’t figure. Maybe she’ll get Mr. Puttusamy to use them instead of paint remover for stripping down the staircase banisters, which need a new coat of paint badly. Anyway, Natasha will find out later. What she knows now is that Mrs. Puttusamy’s on her Tuesday high. Paying less for more is the ultimate, Natasha has heard her tell Mr. Puttusamy; real cheap thrills are fewer and harder to come by nowadays than when they were young.
Natasha steels herself for the worst as she watches Mrs. Puttusamy trundle towards her checkout counter, eyeing the one and only TRULY SPECIAL ITEM 101, the buy-one-get-four-free offer stacked in front of the till. It’s the four cans of rat-poison they haven’t managed to sell for a year! There she goes, on a roll, trundling over the fat woman who’s her deadly enemy and weekly competitor; over the toes of the skinny widow who’s only concerned about the storewide discount and buys only premium, nothing lesser; shoving aside that grandfather who always brings the five grandkids he babysits alone. Clearing a path straight for the TRULY SPECIAL ITEM 101. She grabs it with her free right hand, and motors to a smooth landing in front of Natasha.
“Look what I got today Nat,” Mrs. Puttusamy says to her great grand-daughter.
“Put in on the bill please,” she says airily as Natash packs all the useless goodies into her chauffeur’s waiting trolley.
Natasha can hear everyone giggling at her. She looks at the four cans of rat poison she’s putting into a plastic carrier. Maybe tonight, she figures, she’ll put it Great Gran’s special vegetarian curry that no one eats.
this is lovely, there is always one ahead of the game for couponing and the like. I wish I was. Me, I used to try and rush the shopping and get out as quick as possible, now, I dawdle in the longest line, catching snippets of conversation, looking in baskets and trollies and imagining, lots of imaginings…
Hmm? Something to think about? Fewer vs Less. I’ll be more conscious of how I used these two words in the future. Thanks for the thought provoking post. P.S. I enjoyed reading everyone’s stories.
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