What is the 'it'?

We all know the annoying pedant standing in the express line at the supermarket:

“It’s not ’15 items or less’, it’s ’15 items or fewer’.”

Spoken, almost invariably, with a level of confidence that, if you ask me, is not necessarily warranted.

That there is a difference between “fewer” and “less” seems to be correct. The application of that difference, on the other hand, might turn out to be less transparent than I would like.

I have written before about the judicial tendency to adopt a fancy word when a simpler word would have worked just as well, or to use a longer word when a shorter one would have done the job. This is how judges occasionally find themselves using “whom” when they should have used “who”. It is also, I think, how they might end up using “fewer” when “less” is more likely to have been the right word. At least, that is what I sometimes find myself thinking.

But am I on solid ground? Is “fewer” just a fancier or more “lawyerly” way of saying “less”? Or is it a genuinely different word, which will be either right or wrong depending on the sentence in which it appears?

“I have fewer than fifty dollars on me.”

Clearly wrong.

“He is fewer than six feet tall.”

Clearly wrong.

“It takes fewer than 30 minutes to drive from Fish Creek to Leongatha.”

Not as clearly wrong, perhaps, but still wrong.

“The victim was standing fewer than ten feet from the accused.”

Wrong? Clearly wrong? What do you think? This one doesn’t jump out at me as being egregiously wrong. But if the first three examples should have been “less”, shouldn’t this one be “less” as well?

Each of these sentences is using a quantity, or a measurement, not as an absolute number but as a relative measure:

“I don’t have enough money to pay for this.”

“He is too short to be a basketball player.”

“Fish Creek is not far from Leongatha.”

“The accused was close enough to the victim to make him a suspect.”

But if that is how it works, where does “fewer” fit in?

The “experts” have a simple rule for this: use “fewer” if you could replace that word with a number. Otherwise, use “less”.

“Our fig tree produced less figs this year.” Accidental alliteration aside, I would use “fewer figs”. That seems uncontroversial, it is not offensive to the ear, and it follows the “rule”. The word “fewer” can be replaced by a number: “our fig tree produced zero figs this year”. (Sad but true.)

Now, I would love to say that I never met a rule I didn’t like. But that’s not quite true: I don’t like rules that (a) I don’t understand or (b) are ambiguous. Especially (b).

“The United States lost because they scored fewer goals.”

Here, the word “fewer” can be replaced by an absolute number (in this case, “one”):

“The United States lost because they scored one goal.”

That works.

But it’s also not the whole story. The United States lost because one goal was less goals – or is it “fewer”? – than Belgium scored.

“The United States lost because they scored fewer goals than Belgium.”

Again, this sounds plausible as a sentence. But the “rule” says to use “fewer” if the word could be replaced by an absolute number. A sentence that said “The United States lost because they scored one goals than Belgium” is not a proper sentence. Application of the “rule” would therefore suggest that the United States lost because they scored less goals than Belgium.

Maybe that is the rule. Maybe the two sentences do need to be written differently. Maybe the United States scored fewer goals, but the United States also scored less goals than Belgium.

But there is no daylight between the two sentences, save for the addition of a couple of words at the end. Do those words – or, specifically, does adding the word “than” into the mixture – make all the difference? That seems like a fine needle to have to thread.

Still, maybe it’s correct: our fig tree produced fewer figs this year, but our fig tree also produced less figs than in previous years.

Be that as it may, here is where things become slightly more troubling:

“The High Court published fewer judgments during the COVID years”? Or “The High Court published less judgments during the COVID years”?

The “rule” would suggest “fewer”, because “fewer” could be replaced by a number. But is “less” clearly wrong? The first (“fewer”) works as a statement of fact: “the precise number was …”. The second (“less”) works as a critical statement: “the number of judgments was lower than usual”. Is it possible that the choice of “less” or “fewer” depends on the meaning the reader is supposed to infer? To misquote Monty Python, that is no basis for a system of language.

Time to head back to the supermarket.

“Fifteen items or less” is not simply an observation along the lines of “there are not a lot of items in your basket”. Rather, it is a way of saying “if you have 16 items you are in the wrong line, pal”. Isn’t that looking at the quantity of items as an absolute number? Turning to the “rule”, you could substitute a number: “fifteen items or 14” works grammatically. In that case, why shouldn’t the sign say “15 items or fewer”? It is starting to look like the supermarket pedant might be right, after all. (That is so annoying.)

On the other hand, Dreyer says that anyone who insists on “fewer” in relation to supermarket queues has too much time on their hands and should get themselves a hobby. Point taken. But if that is right, then is there really any clear, precise and inflexible use for “fewer” at all, whether the conversation is about High Court judgments, or figs, or World Cup scores? If “fifteen items or less” is acceptable, isn’t it the case that THERE IS NO RULE, and that what we are dealing with is PURE ANARCHY?

What, then, is the takeout from all this? Possibly nothing but abject confusion. But possibly this: if your judge uses “less” in a judgment, it’s probably fine. If they have used “fewer”, it might be worth giving it a little poke, just to see what might fall out.

Oh, and also this: watch out for me the next time you go to the supermarket. I will be the guy with a slightly manic glint in his eye, wielding a very judgmental Sharpie.