Fewer vs Less: Know the Difference
You've seen the sign at the grocery store: "10 items or less." It's wrong. Grammatically, it should be "10 items or fewer." But here's the thing — this "rule" is more interesting and more nuanced than the grammar police would have you believe.
The Basic Rule
Fewer goes with things you can count individually. Less goes with things you can't count — mass nouns, abstract concepts, continuous quantities.
- Fewer cars, fewer people, fewer complaints, fewer calories. (Countable — you can have one car, two cars.)
- Less traffic, less noise, less frustration, less sugar. (Uncountable — you can't have "one traffic" or "two sugars" as separate entities.)
That's the textbook answer. If you remember only this, you'll be right about 80% of the time. But here's where it gets messy.
The Supermarket Sign: Why "10 Items or Less" Is Famous
"10 items or less" is the most cited usage error in the English language. Linguists call it a shibboleth — a usage that marks whether you know "the rule." Traditional grammar says it must be "10 items or fewer" because items are countable.
But go to any supermarket in any English-speaking country. The sign says "10 items or less." Why? Because "fewer" sounds formal and stiff in that context. "Less" has been used with countable nouns in everyday speech for over a thousand years — since Old English. The "rule" that "fewer" must be used for countables was invented in 1770 by a grammarian named Robert Baker, who expressed it as a preference, not a rule. Later grammarians turned his preference into dogma.
So when someone corrects you for saying "less people" instead of "fewer people," you can tell them the rule was made up by one guy in the 18th century who just thought "fewer" sounded nicer. Context: Baker also thought "less" with countables was "the most common mistake." He was outnumbered then, and he's outnumbered now.
The Exceptions: When "Less" Is Correct for Countable Things
Even strict grammarians agree that "less" works with countable nouns in specific situations:
Time: I'll be there in less than ten minutes. The meeting lasted less than two hours. (Nobody says "fewer than ten minutes." Even the strictest prescriptivist uses "less" here.)
Money: It costs less than twenty dollars. She earns less than fifty thousand a year. (Money is treated as a quantity, not individual dollar bills.)
Distance: The airport is less than five miles away. He ran less than three kilometers. (Distance is continuous, even when measured in countable units.)
Weight: He weighs less than 200 pounds. The package is less than ten kilos. (Same logic — weight is a continuous quantity.)
The pattern: when a countable unit is being used to measure a continuous quantity (time, money, distance, weight), "less" is standard. You're measuring the amount, not counting the individual units.
Percentages and fractions: Less than 30% of voters showed up. Less than half the class passed. (Even though voters and students are countable, percentages and fractions are treated as amounts.)
What the Data Shows
Corpus analysis tells an interesting story. Google Ngram Viewer shows that "less people" has been gaining on "fewer people" for two centuries. In British English speech, "less" with countables is now more common than "fewer" in many contexts. American English is more conservative, but the trend is the same direction.
The Oxford English Corpus — which tracks real-world usage across millions of documents — shows that "less" with plural countables appears in roughly 12% of all instances where "fewer" would be prescribed. That's up from about 8% in the 1960s. The language is shifting, whether grammarians like it or not.
What Merriam-Webster Says
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage has a characteristically measured take. They point out that "less" has been used with countable nouns since the time of Alfred the Great (9th century). They cite examples from respected writers across centuries — Jonathan Swift, William Shakespeare, John Milton, the King James Bible — all using "less" where modern pedants would insist on "fewer."
M-W's conclusion: the "fewer/less" rule is a stylistic guideline, not a grammatical requirement. In formal writing, follow it. In speech and informal writing, use whichever sounds natural. They note that "the tide of usage is strongly in favor of 'less' with plural count nouns."
Practical Advice
Here's what I actually do:
In formal writing (academic papers, business reports, cover letters): Follow the rule. Use "fewer" for countable things, "less" for uncountable things. You will never be wrong doing this, and it signals attention to detail.
In everyday writing and speech: Use "fewer" when it sounds natural. Use "less" when "fewer" would sound stuffy. Nobody at a party says "there are fewer people here than I expected." They say "less people." And that's fine.
The supermarket sign: "10 items or less" is established usage. It's not going anywhere. Save your outrage for actual communication problems.
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