The death of 'fewer'

This may have been discussed before but it is making me squirm. There is an advert for 'Finish' where the tag line is "it has less chemicals." As soon as I heard that I began to listen for other instances where 'less' was used instead of 'fewer, ' and it became apparent that 'fewer ' has gone out of use. I thought 'less' applied to substance and 'fewer' applied to numbers, but no longer, it appears.

You're right, I'm hearing it less often or fewer times than before.

I fear that the distinction between the continuous (less) and the countable (fewer) seems to be being lost.

Being lost? It was never really there to begin with. "Less" has always been used this way; it's only recently that it's been considered "wrong".

>4 PaulFoley:

Really? when did the change occur?

#4 Rubbish! I have fewer coins in my purse than before I went shopping but I have less money. Don't tell me you would write 'less coins?'

>6 oldstick: Maybe it's a UK difference, but I'd naturally say something like "there's less coins in the bowl than I thought."

I think I'd say that there aren't as many coins in my pocket as before I went to the store.

I automatically correct people now because so many people say less when they mean fewer. Sometimes I even do it without knowing I'm doing it.

I find myself doing that too. What frustrates me is having to correct it in written documents. I understand that colloquial speech is often not grammatically correct, but writing should, for the most part, follow some simple rules.

In the UK a few years ago there was a lot of fussing about signs over supermarkets' express check-outs saying "10 items or less". Tesco changed theirs to read "Up to 10 items".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7591905.stm - This article does remark that the less/fewer distinction is less observed in the USA.

When we look the other way, we have more money and more coins.

I can distinctly remember my great-great-aunt, who trained as a teacher before the First World War, complaining about this one.
"Fewer" must be enjoying one of the most protracted death-scenes in the history of pedantry!

When we look the other way, we have more money and more coins.

Speak for yourself.

5> According to Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage the first known occurrence of the "rule" in question is a statement of personal preference by some chap named Baker in 1770, and "{h}ow Baker's opinion came to be an inviolable rule, we do not know."

One of the examples of "less" in the OED demonstrates a classic situation where following the rule would ruin the sentence: I thinke there are fewe Vniuersities that haue lesse faults then Oxford, many that haue more. (J Lyly, 1580)

I think there are few universities that have fewer faults then Oxford, many that have more.

Seems to work just fine, to this non-native speaker's ear?

>1 oldstick:

'less chemicals' is actually subtly different from 'fewer chemicals'. Treating chemicals as an ensemble there may be less of it, without increasing the number of chemical species. 'less' is therefore probably no more nor no less meaningless that 'fewer' in the context given.

Of course one has to suspend one's knowledge that pure water is also a chemical!

Speaking of which, the claim 'kills 99% of household bacteria' begs the question 'How do we know that the remaining 1% aren't the ones that kill humans?'

>17 CliffordDorset:
Some people like to have it both ways - I saw a little while ago in a publication from a consumer organisation that they'd objected to a drink label with the misleading text "contains natural ingredients". They were in some doubt as to whether they would be able to make the objection stick, since about 99% of the composition of the product was water. Apparently the manufacturer saw sense and changed the label rather than be laughed at in print.

>17 CliffordDorset: The 99% household bacteria line bothers me too but I took it to mean that it was capable of killing all types of household nasties but wasn't completely effective. Given that bacteria multiply geometrically any thing less that 100% won't do. The 99% will soon be back.

Less than or fewer?

The way I see it, a product that contains fewer chemicals can still be 100% chemical. It may be 100% of one chemical.

A can of pure cyanide contains only one chemical (if you count cyanide as one chemical). It is able to, therefore, legally state that it contains fewer chemicals than a can of baked beans. It cannot legally state that it contains less chemical than a can of beans.

I know which one I'd rather eat. (If I had to. :))

Of course, water is a chemical - maybe we shouldn't drink it at all!

And then oil taken from oil wells, and the many products it is refined to, can be described as 100% organic. Make mine a double Avcat, thanks!

I asked a vendor of organic fruit-juice if he knew of any inorganic fruit juices I could try ...

#23> That's been a gag of mine for years. Most people just look confused. And the people who do get it aren't generally that amused. I do enjoy the eye roll I get from my wife, though.

My usual comeback is that cyanide is organic.

ETA: oops, saw you have that up there, >21 Novak:.

>23 Noisy:, >24 rocketjk:
In Holland and Germany you see organically-grown fruit and veg advertised as "bio" or "biologisch", which is just as absurd if you take it literally (I think it originally comes from Rudolf Steiner's term "biodynamic").

Since I quite often buy such products and convince myself that I feel healthier and more virtuous as a result, I have to conclude that my capacity for absorbing marketing gibberish must be quite extraordinary.