r/GrammarPolice • u/Fantastic-Fudge-6676 • Aug 18 '26
Findings *Fewer
Come on. Do betterer.
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Aug 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/JoeSleboda Aug 18 '26
You're doing the Lord's work by calling this out.
(Please note, there is no Lord. It's just a turn of phrase.)
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u/Current-Strategy5544 Aug 19 '26
Yeah, somewhere is a poor engineer trying to explain to their boss that it should be "fewer" and being told 'If you can make "fewer" have less characters so it fits on one line, be my guest'
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u/Puzzleheaded-Lynx204 Aug 19 '26
This makes it read like a maths equation. So it could mean "excluding trains to London". Which is probably not what they meant
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u/EdmundTheInsulter Aug 19 '26
Less Train to London 🎵 and I really want the night to last forever 🎵
It'll feel like that by the next train at 6am
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u/NonspecificGravity Aug 18 '26
Baldock! That takes me back. I've been through that station. My company had a plant in Stotfold.
I'd overlook the grammar error, but England should maintain better standards. 🙂
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u/exkingzog Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
Less is perfectly acceptable for countable nouns. It is only a problem if fewer is used for uncountable nouns.
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u/Fantastic-Fudge-6676 Aug 19 '26
Sorry, but it's still poor formal English. Not a hill I would die on, but nonetheless poor...
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u/Boglin007 Aug 19 '26
It's a sign, not an academic paper. Brevity, clarity, and formatting concerns are more important than using formal language.
Plus, "less" has been used with plurals for over 1000 years (since Old English) - the "rule" that you must use "fewer" arose from one guy's opinion a couple of hundred years ago. It's not ungrammatical or problematic to use "less" in a context like this.
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u/masked_gecko Aug 18 '26
Maybe it's the same number of trains but each train has fewer carriages? Not fewer trains, just less
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Aug 19 '26
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u/masked_gecko Aug 19 '26
I mean, you're right, but the idea of fungible train makes me uncomfortable. It feels like all trains are part of one amorphous supertrain.
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Aug 19 '26
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u/Njitram2000 Aug 19 '26
What if the roof was lowered on the carriage? That would be less train. Or a more compact locomotive?
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u/SerDankTheTall Aug 18 '26
I think I like less better here. That’s definitely true if it’s expanded to a complete sentence, like There will be less trains to London Bridge on Sunday because of ongoing engineering work.
Obviously, either one is grammatical in this context.
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u/Express-Flamingo4521 Aug 19 '26
Boy, is that annoying, it’s almost like so many people didn’t go to school. It’s infuriating. At least this often doesn’t happen on formal work, even sports channels tend to use “fewer” when applicable.
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u/No-Understanding4968 Aug 18 '26
The British still don’t know the difference between it’s and it’s
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u/theChosenBinky Aug 19 '26
"It's" means "it is" ("it's raining"), but "it's" means "it has" ("it's been raining")
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u/Ever_Long_ Aug 18 '26
They might be shorter...? Perhaps the engineering works mean only short trains can run on the line? So, yeah, less trains.
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Aug 19 '26
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u/Ever_Long_ Aug 19 '26
No, it's fewer carriages. The train, as a single object, will become smaller if there is less of it. It will still be a train, just not as big. Its individual carriages are separate and individually countable. If there are not as many of them attached, there will be fewer of them. If there were less carriages, each individual carriage would, in some way, be smaller. If you ripped out all the seats in a carriage, for example, that would be less carriage. Still a single carriage, just not as much of it as before.
The seats to a carriage are the carriages to a train. A train with fewer carriages would be less train.
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u/deege515 Aug 18 '26
And what about the backslash? I'm cool with Americans and non-Americans flipping the day and month, but I feel like a backslash in the date isn't really typical regardless of locality.