athe.la blog » act on co2 http://blog.athe.la how to internets with style Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:37:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The government's bad grammar http://blog.athe.la/the-governments-bad-grammar/ http://blog.athe.la/the-governments-bad-grammar/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:38:13 +0000 Dan Cooper http://atheladev.wordpress.com/?p=189 [...]]]> The government has bad grammar as evidenced by this act on co2 advert. At the end it shows the words ‘Driving 5 miles less’ and this is bad grammar. It should be ‘Driving 5 miles fewer’ as miles can be counted.  However, it’s not public knowledge that fewer is the most appropriate word, as proven by the (admittedly less common nowadays) “10 items or less” signs above the basket checkouts at supermarkets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ECPUd8dmOY

You should always use the word fewer when talking about things that can be counted such as: miles, trees, lemons.  For cases where you would use the word less is for objects that can’t be directly counted such as: distance, forest, fruit.

I walked 5 fewer miles to get to the moon.
I walked less distance to interstellar space.

There are a gajillion fewer trees everyday thanks to deforestation.
There is less forest now that we have paper.

People eat lemons everyday, there are fewer lemons in the world today than yesterday.
When all these lemons get eaten, there is less fruit.

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