Check out this headline: “Could Less Presidential Choices Help Voters?”
Or how about this one Nigeria: Nigeria Shut-in Crude Drops to Less Than 600000 Barrels per Day.
If these don’t sound wrong, then your ears have probably suffered permanent damage as a result of the grammatically-challenged world misusing less and fewer.
Partitive and Non-partitive Nouns
Yes, I am trying to scare you, but this is what lies behind the distinction between less and fewer. When the noun you are describing is partitive, you use fewer, while when the noun you are describing is non-partitive, you use less.
Like, okay, what the hell does that actually mean?
It’s easy: if you can count it, use fewer. If you can’t count it, use less. Things you can count: glasses of water, loaves of bread, pills, cotton balls. Things you can’t count: water, bread, medicine, cotton.
Okay, so how do I know if something is countable? Got any tricks?
The Few Trick
One easy trick is to test it out with “a few.” Fewer comes from “a few” (big surprise there). If it makes sense to say “a few” of anything, then it can be counted, because “a few” means (roughly) two or three. If saying “a few” doesn’t make sense…well, then you don’t have something you can count and you are in the less category.
Let’s try a few examples
A few…glasses of water? MAKES SENSE!
A few…water? DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!
A few…pills? MAKES SENSE!
A few…medicine? DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!
A few…loaves of bread? MAKES SENSE!
A few…bread? DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!
Now, one could argue that “a few waters” does make sense, just like “a few cokes” makes sense. But in both of these instances you are implicitly referring to bottles or glasses of coke or water. So, the nouns are actually countable, and all is sane in the world of countable and uncountable nouns.
If you find that you can only use “some” then you are dealing with a noun that can’t be counted:
Some…water
Some…medicine
Some…bread
The Plurals Trick
Bouncing off the last trick, the noun you are modifying is probably countable if has an “s” at the end (as in, it’s plural). That’s because uncountable nouns can’t be plural – because they can’t be counted!
As soon as you figure out whether your noun is countable, you can decide whether to use less or fewer:
Countable:
“A few”
Plural
Verdict: FEWER
Uncountable:
“Some”
Not Plural
Verdict: LESS
So now let’s indict some grammar wrong-doers:
“Could Less Presidential Choices Help Voters?”
1. “A few” choices makes sense.
2. Choices is plural.
Verdict: FEWER, NOT LESS.
Now, a word to the wise: you are much less likely to make a mistake using “fewer” than using” less. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that people use “fewer” incorrectly much less frequently than they use “less” incorrectly.
Overall, you’re also likely to see “less” a lot more than “fewer.” Why’s that?
So here’s the complicated part I’ve been keeping secret: “less” is not only an adjective, but also an adverb. "Less” describes nouns as well as adjectives and other adverbs. (This kind of makes sense when you think about “less” describing uncountable nouns, but that’s another story…)
So let’s take an example: Less Motivated Ministries
So you see the word “ministries” and think: that’s definitely countable, and so the use of “less” is incorrect. Well, you are right and you are wrong. “Ministries” is countable, but that doesn’t really matter, because in this sentence, “motivated” is what’s being modified. What’s being conveyed here isn’t that there are fewer ministries that are motivated, it is that ministries are “less motivated.” Subtle, but I told this was the complicated part!
So let’s go back to our crazy headline of before: “Could Less Presidential Choices Help Voters?”
I assumed above that less was referring to “choices,” and given the content of the article, I believe that is a fair assumption. But…what if “less” is referring to “presidential” and not “choices”? Well, then in that case it certainly isn’t a grammatical error, but it does change the meaning of the question:
“Could Fewer Presidential Choices Help Voters?” In other words, will life be easier for me as a voter if I only have to pick between two candidates instead of among 10?
versus
Could Less Presidential Choices Help Voters?” So, will life be better for me as a voter if the choices I have are, well, crappy?
So, before you go handing out grammar tickets, you should be aware of what is being modified. If it’s a noun, go through the two tricks I’ve described here to figure out whether you should use fewer or less. If it's an adjective or an adverb, your job is easy: it’s always less.
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