6 ms·
Fewer hours. And yeah, I agree -- that's how I got mine done.
by foobarbecue 9y ago
Fewer hours. And yeah, I agree -- that's how I got mine done.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoPhD in Grammar Nazism?
- fonnesbeck 9y agoNo, just English.
- treehau5 9y agoIf this were actually a thing, you wouldn't need to capitalize the the G in grammar.
- kgwxd 9y agoWouldn't it be if it were the title of a Ph.D. program? I definitely forgot the dots though.
- treehau5 9y agoGood question actually, had to look it up. > Except for languages, such as English, French and Japanese, the names of academic disciplines, majors, minors, programs and courses of study are not proper nouns and should not be capitalized. Example: She majored in integrated supply management and German. https://wmich.edu/writing/rules/capitalization https://wmich.edu/writing/rules/capitalization
- SubiculumCode 9y agoI admit I logged in to HN to make the same grammar correction. Fewer/Less grammar errors bug me badly. I don't know why this particular grammatical error bugs me so, but every time I encounter it, I have an inner voice that yells 'fewer.' My family hates me for it.
- sideshowb 9y agoStannis has taught you well
- a_e_k 9y agoSame 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.)
- throwaway287391 9y agoI 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").
- a_e_k 9y agoTrue, 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.)
- SubiculumCode 9y agoOr is it a difference only of being singular or plural?
- RhysU 9y ago> mass vs. countable nouns Into which bucket do grammar folks place countable infinites?
- SubiculumCode 9y agoI generally go by 'If it is countable' which in the end may just be the difference of being singlular or plural.