don’t mass your count nouns

[larvatus]

“Less than half of all American adults ever read a book after leaving school”, writes Julia Hanna on behalf of Harvard Business School. And had she belonged to the right half, she would have known that it’s “Fewer than…”.

Crossposted to larvatus, harvard_u, elitistasshat, and grammar_whores.

Comments

Ideology or grammar?...

[remi-jakovlevic.livejournal.com]

...As far as grammar (I mean: predictability) is concerned, and granted that you regard Google raw results as not totally inconsistent:

191 000 for "Fewer than half of all American..."
772 000 for "Less than half of all American..."

Could the right half be even less than a small quarter?

Re: Ideology or grammar?...

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

Even less than a small quarter is the right half for the discriminating prescriptivist.

poll pots

[remi-jakovlevic.livejournal.com]

So it was sheer ideology. OK, on this ground, I'm ready to consider that the right half can consist of you alone. No kidding!
And this rules out any reference to polls, where - be it said 'en passant' - massing of count nouns doesn't sound illogical at all.

вдогонку

[remi-jakovlevic.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/velik_moguch/1010050.html

Re: вдогонку

[larvatus.livejournal.com]

Double decimation?