Less or fewer?

Don't know when to use less and when to use fewer? Here's how to get it right.

Use fewer when:

·         referring to people or things

·         in the plural

·         when they can be counted (you don’t have to know the exact number, it is enough to know that they are quantifiable)   

Use less when:

·         referring to things that can’t be counted ( less time, less money, less talk)

 

The fewer the words, the better the prayer. Martin Luther

The less you talk, the more you're listened to. Abigail Van Buren

These two quotes demonstrate the difference nicely. The words of a prayer, are plural, can be counted and so Martin Luther used ‘fewer’ in his sentence.  There is no way of quantifying talk, and so Abigail Van Buren used ‘less’ in her sentence.

 

Further examples:

Less soft fruit is expected to grace our tables, following the wet summer.

Fewer strawberries are expected to grace our tables, following the wet summer.

 

People are buying fewer paperbacks

You’ll be making less money if you continue to ignore electronic publishing.

 

Fewer people are smokers these days.

I smoke less, now my wife has quit.

Popular place names

Capitalize the popular names of regions

· Left Bank
· Chicago’s South Side
· Silicon Valley
· Narnia

The popular names of regions can generally be considered singular, as you can see in the examples listed above.

Where popular names describe two or more distinct places the popular name will be plural. For example, the Chanel Islands refers to an archipelago of five English speaking islands off the coast of France (Guernsey, Jersey, Sark, Herm and Alderney) and therefore is plural.









When two or more regions are linked in a single expression, the usual practice is to put the generic part of the names in lower case e.g., the Eastern and Western fronts of WW2.

Take care not to capitalize the cardinal directions (north, east, south and west) if they simply indicate direction or location. Where cardinal directions form part of a geographical description they should be capitalized. For example, the Far East and Middle Eastern both refer to ill defined regions and not a specific location.