It's “less than three weeks”, not “fewer than”

The stylebooks are wrong on the rule about less/fewer.

Here is an excerpt from a Reuters story about the Egypt Air crash that made me cringe:

The recorders are designed to emit acoustic signals for 30 days after a crash, giving search teams fewer than three weeks to spot them in waters up to 9,840-feet (3,000 meters) deep, which is on the edge of their range.

It should read “less than three weeks”.

The stylebooks say that you should use “fewer” for things that you can count and “less” for things you don’t count. You can count one, two, three weeks.

But I am with Grammar Girl on this one. She says,

Time, money, distance, and weight are often listed as exceptions to the traditional “can you count it” rule because they take less, but when you use the “singular or plural” rule, time, money, distance, and weight all fall in line.

She has a couple of excellent examples to make the case that you should use “less” rather than “fewer” in those cases.

• We had less than $1,000 dollars in the bank.
• We’re less than 50 miles away.
• I can fix the roof in less than 12 hours.

The number of dollars is one amount of money. The number of miles is one distance. The number of hours is one period.

And I’ll add this one: All the wrestlers in that class have to weigh less than 140 pounds. “Fewer” would sound absurd in that case and is, of course, wrong.

Related:

On designing a master's degree and becoming an academic

Nomadic life: The kindness of friends and family

Roman holiday in western Spain

Fewer or less: which is correct?

Fewer or less: which is correct

When I see misuse of this, it makes me crazy, for some reason. The worst offenders are the ones who are trying to be meticulously correct and impose "fewer" in places where "less" is really the appropriate word.

Newspaper copy editors have come up with rigid rules of usage that lead people to abominations such as this one from the Wall Street Journal:

Fewer than three years later, Mr. Slim earned more than $500 million in profit when Verizon Communications Inc. bought the carrier...

Ugh! I can just hear the Wall Street Journal´s copy editor saying, "You should use 'fewer' with things that can be counted."  The editor would be right in saying that years can be counted but would be wrong in applying the logic to this phrase.  Three years is a single measure of time, a unit, not a series of three discrete units. 

It should be, "Less than three years ago..."  

Here´s another abomination, from a story about Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt:

It took him fewer than 10 seconds to run 100 meters but at least 10 minutes to complete his victory lap. 

Again, 10 seconds is a period of time, a single period of time, not 10 individual units.  

It should be, "less than 10 seconds".  "Fewer" doesn´t even sound right. Again, the editor is applying the rule of countable units inappropriately. 

Here is another, from the New York Times:

An $11 fare to drive a passenger fewer than four miles was all D.Y. Kim had to show for his morning's labors.

Four miles is a distance, and in the context of the story is meant to signify a single unit of measure, not four. 

It should be, "less than four miles."

 

Here are some examples of correct usage:

Less than 1 million barrels of oil spilled from the tanker. Correct


There was more than 3 feet of snow on the ground. Correct. 

The robbers took less than $50 from the till. Correct

After the storm, the farmer had less than 10 acres of corn available for harvest. Correct

The bridge has clearance for vehicles less than 8 feet high. Correct 

I´ve visited the online AP Stylebook and reviewed its "Ask the Editor" section, where people seek advice on how to apply this rule. Most of the time, the editor applies a fierce kind of logic that results in bad advice being given. Here´s an example:

Do percentages count as numbers or amounts? In other words, is it: "Fewer than 3 percent of the country's stores..." or "Less than 3 percent of the country's stores..." – from Los Angeles on Mon, Oct 08, 2007

Editor's reply: The example seems to refer to individual stores, so fewer would be correct.

I could not disagree more. In this case, 3 percent is an amount, a quantity, a single measure, not a series of three countable units. With editors giving advice like that, it is no wonder that the abominations continue to proliferate.

As I learn every day in my struggles to speak perfect Spanish, language resists logic.  For every grammar rule that exists, there are other rules that countermand it.  We need fewer editors sticking to the logic of a single grammar rule, and more understanding the context of the rule.

Whoever or whomever

I was watching “The Office“ here on cable last night, and in this episode the characters debate at an all-staff meeting about whether someone has used “whomever“ properly.

There were lots of opinions, nearly all of them wrong, and I wanted to scream and pull my hair out. Less than 1 percent of the population knows how to use the words. One bright guy at The Office said that “whomever“ was the “more formal“ way to say whoever. Well.

The rule is, you use whoever when it´s the subject within the clause, and whomever when it´s an object within the clause, or the object of a preposition within the clause.

Incorrect People often mistakenly say, for example, Give the money to whomever wants it, thinking that it´s “whomever“ because the word follows “to.“ But it should be “whoever wants it“ because “whoever“ is the subject of the clause.

Correct: Give the money to whoever wants it.

Hint: To test whether you´re using the words properly, just drop “-ever“ from the word and see if it sounds right.

Wrong “He will perform for whomever shows interest.“ (Test: He will perform for whom shows interest.) The test doesn´t sound right, does it? That´s because without the -ever cluttering things up, you can see that “who“ is correct as the subject of the clause “who shows interest“ or “whoever shows interest.“

Correct: He will perform for whoever shows interest.

If you don´t like my explanation, try this one. It´s pretty good, and it tries mightily to make it simple.