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>> Aim for 2 or fewer.

This also violates current usage conventions for handling numbers in text.[1] Figures are only meant to be used in greater numbers (a rule of thumb is anything over 30, but I think I read that in a David Foster Wallace text, fwiw) with more complex verbal / textual representations - that is, not "two".

[1] https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/593/01/

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Yeah the harping on "fewer" vs. "less" and completely ignoring the "2" bothered me too. In my time as a newspaper writer (long ago), the general rule of thumb we used was once you hit 13, switch to numbers. Of course, newspapers have different priorities regarding space, so I could understand if this rule is different for other forms of writing.

I think the "2" is appropriate here. This is not protracted discourse, it's a label. When my sentence lights up some color, and my eyes jump to the sidebar and find that color, we want the max count to pop in a way that it shouldn't in ordinary text.

I recall reading somewhere the phrase "nine or 10". Clearly the writer (or editor) was adhering rather mindlessly to the house rule.

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