The Case for Less Words

Brian Beutler was trying to convince me to skip the NBA Finals and go with him to see Drag Me To Hell tonight. I objected that, among other things, I don’t like horror movies. First he said it’s not a real horro movie, “it’s a comedic horror movie like Evil Dead, only funnier and less monsters.” Then he corrected himself: “fewer” monsters.

Matthew Yglesias
eh, I think I’ve got a solid plan
never did understand the less/fewer thing though

Brian Beutler
really?
fewer is for countable items
such as
monsters
less is for abstract quantities
you have less milk
or fewer gallons of milk

Matthew Yglesias
yeah, yeah, people always reexplain it to me
then I forget again
sounds like b***s***
if we just abolished the word “fewer” we’d be in good shape

Brian Beutler
i don’t know man

Matthew Yglesias
how does it really help us?

Brian Beutler
“I’ve got less gallons of milk”
sounds weird

Matthew Yglesias
less words!
more easier to learn the language!

I’m prepared to stand behind this view. The less/fewer distinction isn’t really that hard to learn, but it would be much easier to not have to bother. I can’t think of any situations in which the existence of the two different words is actually helpful to our understanding of what’s being communicated. Native speakers of the English language have a perverse tendency to take pride in the difficulty of our language, but it’s not actually a good thing.