5 ms·

It should be "Fewer messages are more." You use "less" when the item in question is not measured in discrete units - "there is less rain today than yesterday."

It should be "Fewer messages are more." You use "less" when the item in question is not measured in discrete units - "there is less rain today than yesterday." You use "fewer" when the item in question is measured in discrete units - "there are fewer raindrops today than yesterday." Messages are discrete units.

polm23 12y ago
You're welcome to believe that nonsense if you like but please don't perpetuate it. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/myl/languagelog/archives/003775.ht... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less
- jtheory 12y ago
  I'd recommend they find different wording. There are plenty of people out there who "know" the less/fewer grammar rule, and those people are going to find this landing page a bit unprofessional. And I'm not a grammar prescriptivist, but "Less messages are more" still sounds wrong to my ear -- it's based on the phrase "Less is more", but putting "messages" in there forces the "is" to "are", and that clashes unpleasantly. My brain wants to fix it to "Less messages is more", which is then also bad. "Fewer messages are more" isn't any better -- we lose the "less is more" echo (which was the whole point!), and it has a whiff of "my English teacher told me it should be 'fewer'." :) Alternatives (none perfect, but better): - Just use "Less is more" as the heading (and possibly tweak the copy below to start with the word "messages"). - Change "messages" to some non-plural word so you can preserve the "is" -- there may not be a good option here, though ("communication"? ugh). - Just toss it, and capture the idea in some other phrase. "Don't drown in messages", "No message flood", or whatever, then you can even put *"Less is more" when it comes to messages" in the copy below. [edit: dumb errors in a post about grammar and word choice tend to backfire]
  - bujatt 12y ago
    We just changed it for the simpler: "LESS IS MORE".

polm23 12y ago

You're welcome to believe that nonsense if you like but please don't perpetuate it. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/myl/languagelog/archives/003775.ht... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less

jtheory 12y ago
I'd recommend they find different wording. There are plenty of people out there who "know" the less/fewer grammar rule, and those people are going to find this landing page a bit unprofessional. And I'm not a grammar prescriptivist, but "Less messages are more" still sounds wrong to my ear -- it's based on the phrase "Less is more", but putting "messages" in there forces the "is" to "are", and that clashes unpleasantly. My brain wants to fix it to "Less messages is more", which is then also bad. "Fewer messages are more" isn't any better -- we lose the "less is more" echo (which was the whole point!), and it has a whiff of "my English teacher told me it should be 'fewer'." :) Alternatives (none perfect, but better): - Just use "Less is more" as the heading (and possibly tweak the copy below to start with the word "messages"). - Change "messages" to some non-plural word so you can preserve the "is" -- there may not be a good option here, though ("communication"? ugh). - Just toss it, and capture the idea in some other phrase. "Don't drown in messages", "No message flood", or whatever, then you can even put *"Less is more" when it comes to messages" in the copy below. [edit: dumb errors in a post about grammar and word choice tend to backfire]
- bujatt 12y ago
  We just changed it for the simpler: "LESS IS MORE".