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Comment by a_e_k | Hacker News Reader

Same here. I think the reason it bugs me so much is because my mind views it as a type error:

    int fewer;
    float less;

is how I tend to remember the distinction. (Fortunately in my family, my wife is the language nerd who first called me on my misuse many years ago. Now I notice it everywhere too. It's weirdly viral.)

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I don't think that's quite right. For example, hours can be non-integer-valued (as in "three and a half hours"). The distinction is that "less" is used only for mass nouns (e.g., "less water").

True, but as a heuristic I it is safe to say that if you'd use integer units to represent a quantity then you should use "fewer" rather than "less". That tends to capture the majority of cases for using "fewer". Admittedly, the discrete but non-integer-valued cases are a bit more nuanced.

(And yes, I do realize that the actual definition is in terms of mass vs. countable nouns.)

Or is it a difference only of being singular or plural?

> mass vs. countable nouns

Into which bucket do grammar folks place countable infinites?

I feel the same about it, but to be fair, this is one of those (many) rules that was essentially invented in the 18th century by prescriptive grammarians who took a guideline of style and turned it into a rule of grammar. “Less” has a long history of use with count nouns—originally as a counter, with the genitive, like “less of men” (cf. “shelves of books”).

Fewer is for things that can be counted in numbers. Less is for non-numbered things. It's so easy that it really disturbs me when people get it wrong.

Fewer people. Fewer zoos. Fewer cigarettes. Less hatred. Less abuse. Less misuse of power.

Less person, less zoo, less cigarette, fewer hatreds, fewer abuses, fewer misuses of power.

Flip flopping it around. The last three are now countable. The first three, while maybe verging on nonsensical, are grammatically correct. Less zoo, for example, might be used in the context of closing down part of a zoo. 'I have less cigarette left than Joe', also makes sense, if we are comparing cigarette lengths.

Even though one can say "two people", to me it feels that "less people" or "fewer persons" are more correct than "fewer people".

On another note, see how "fewer times" and "less time" means different things (might help clarify the distinction to some.)

(Non native speaker here though.)

I generally go by 'If it is countable' which in the end may just be the difference of being singlular or plural.

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