I was at the gym today when I saw the words “less carbs” displayed on the TV screen. I’ll admit that I’m completely sick of the carb craze, but that’s not my gripe here. What I disliked about the phrase was the use of the word “less”.
First of all, when you say it out loud, it sounds ignorant. There is a Slimfast commercial with Whoopie Goldberg where a female voice says “less carbs”. Take a good listen to that a few hundred times every night while watching satellite TV and it’ll annoy you too.
The phrase should be “fewer carbs”. Not only does it sound more intelligent, I believe that it’s technically correct.
So when do you use “fewer” versus “less”? Easy. Fewer refers to something tangible, something that can be counted. “Fewer people”, “fewer mistakes”, “fewer users”, and the granddaddy of them all, “12 items or fewer”.
Use “less” when you’re referring to something intangible. “Less intelligent”, “less acceptable”, “less interested”.
Get it right marketing morons!
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April 24th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
Sorry dude. Tangibility has nothing to do with it. Water’s plenty tangible, but it takes less. The general rule is countability. This is, however, not used with measurement units. (i.e., he weighs 3 pounds less, not fewer).
April 25th, 2005 at 10:02 pm
I probably shouldn’t have included tangible, but the premise of my argument remains the same. Things that can be counted are fewer, abstractions are less.
How about three fewer pounds? Or three pounds fewer? I bet a real grammarian would tell us the second one is correct.