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"Fewer guns means fewer deaths from guns" Note that the word "less" doesn't feature once in the linked article.
by josscrowcroft 14y ago
"Fewer guns means fewer deaths from guns"
Note that the word "less" doesn't feature once in the linked article.
- chris_wot 14y agoI must be missing something here. Fewer is a synonym for less.
- barking 14y agoFewer is for things you can count, less is for things you measure
- stinky613 14y agoFewer is supposed to be quantitative; less is supposed to be qualitative.
- boboblong 14y agoNo, that's wrong. The distinction is between continuous and discrete, not quantitative and qualitative.
- pretoriusB 14y agoYes, you are missing the fact that less is to be used with continuous (mass) quantities, and fewer with enumerable (count) ones. Less sugar / fewer tarts, less gunpowder, fewer bullets, etc.
- quarterto 14y agoIt's a made-up distinction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less
- charliepark 14y agoWell, sure. But all grammatical distinctions are contrived. It's still the standard way to distinguish between countable / non-countable objects.
- mkr-hn 14y agoliterally noone cares
- manicdee 14y agoThree people cared enough to argue the point right here on HN. Your claim is trivially falsified.
- mkr-hn 14y agoThat was a subtle joke about how HN is already reddit.
- mkr-hn 14y agoI noticed people are downvoting my posts instead of the posts participating in the tangent of vague pedantry. What does the vague pedantry contribute to the discussion that my calling it out (in the same useless, non-specific way) doesn't?
- barking 14y agoYou are correct of course. But, more is the opposite of both fewer and less so logically shouldn't fewer should interchangeable with less?
- alexkus 14y agoNo, English isn't that simple.
- pretoriusB 14y agoNo, because words are not necessarily transitive in this way (heck, even mathematical properties are not necessarily transitive, with the exception of well defined cases).