LANGUAGE CORNER
Fewer/Less
The Odds Favor Less
Ed Cassidy. chief fiscal officer for a charitable agency in Buffalo, e-mailed to ask, "Can you enlighten me on when 'less' and when 'fewer'."
There's a rule, but a rough one indeed. What it says is that things counted individually are " fewer" and things counted in bulk are "less" — fewer apples, less fruit.
The rule doesn't seem as artificial in practice as the one involving "more than" and "over" (CJR, January/February 1997; on the Web, More Than/Over), but it's close. Time and again "less" is a better choice than "fewer," or certainly as good, with nouns that at first blush might seem to demand the countable treatment: less than a million dollars, less than three days, four members less than a quorum, and so on and on. Each of those plural nouns works as a single unit.
The two words were interchangeable for hundreds of years, and to an extent they still are: The choice is often a close call or doesn't matter. But the invention of the rule in the eighteenth century has had a profound influence, especially in restricting the use of "less." So while a good lawyer could probably get you off, it is at least a misdemeanor these days to say "There are less pickles in the jar."
— CJR, Sept./Oct 2005
