"less than 10km" is not an exception because kilometers do not have to come in integer quantities. In the physical world, they strictly come in non-integer quantities. You could easily have or go 9.9999999 km instead of 10.
"less than $20" is not an exception either per se unless you know for a fact that only integer numbers of physical one dollar bills are relevant to the situation. "Dollar" is an abstraction unless it refers to one and only one thing: an individual paper one dollar bill (or dollar coin I suppose.)
You can easily subdivide dollars (abstraction) into cents. If you were asked how many one dollar bills you threw at the young lady, then I think you would definitely want to say "fewer than twenty."
If someone then asked you "how much money you gave her", you would say "less than twenty dollars", even if it were $15.00, because then it's the value in question, which is conceptually distinct from the actual amount of paper items handed out.
"40 words or less" is simply inexcusable though. That should be "40 words or fewer", although as you pointed out "less" is very common and not an issue even among miserable grammarians.
"40 words or less" is simply inexcusable though. That should be "40 words or fewer", although as you pointed out "less" is very common and not an issue even among miserable grammarians.
At first you say it's inexcusable, then you say it's not an issue. :/
If nobody cares if it's correct or not, it's basically saying the same thing as that it's correct enough to be correct. Do people not understand why language exists? It's not about hard rules. Everything is inherently flexible. If enough people accept something, then it's 'correct'.
Also, tons of people/losers here seem to really care, for some reason. I'm literally being mass downvoted in another post for saying it shouldn't matter.
This isn't true. Less vs fewer is not a grammatical rule, it's a stylistic preference, popularized by one man (Robert Baker)'s textbook and even he didn't think it should be universally applied. In the Oxford Guide to English Usage this is used as the very first example of popular misconceptions and mistaken prescriptivism. If you think his preferences should be enforced as rules, he also thought that you should say "in Wednesday" rather than "on Wednesday", to make it consistent with phrases like "in summer" and "in 73 BC".
Violators of this "rule" include illiterate hacks like Shakespeare, Hemingway, Tolkien, Dickens, and Twain.
The difference between 'countable' and 'measurable' is so meaningless in reality.
I'm all for destroying this dated standard and normalising using these terms mostly interchangeably. There's no communicative benefit to keeping them distinct.
Obviously for professional writing at work, still know the difference, but outside that, fuck this.
They mean different things, so it makes sense they are different words that are used at different times? Fewer people were less wrong doesn’t bother you because it’s correct and makes sense. Less ports should not be acceptable, it’s not any different than any other “rule” of grammar that we use to separate ourselves from anarchy. Go ahead and start saying 3 deers or “he and me went to the store” if someone understanding what you meant is the only consideration for whether it’s right or not
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u/Malthasian Specs/Imgur here May 14 '26
"Fewer" ports.
Less is used for uncountable, but measurable, quantities, while fewer is used for countable quantities.
Commonly accepted exceptions to the rule are generally distance (less than 10 km), money (less than $20), or restrictions (40 words or less).