On accident

I kind of can’t take people seriously when they say On accident, I don’t know or care if its more or less grammatical, it sounds like a child sputtering in my mind. It should be By accident or accidentally

Tummy

Any adult has zero business saying this lol

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21 points

Ha! How much time have you got?

Shallow and pedantic is my speciality.

But for the sake of brevity I’ll simply say that hearing (or reading) less in cases where fewer would be more appropriate is like driving an ice pick into my brain.

Yes…both are technically correct, but I have to fight the urge to be that guy whenever I hear it.

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1 point

Less could historically be used in any case and still can today. The distinction was first suggested by a guy a couple hundred years ago.

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2 points

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

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4 points

My stupid mental trick for keeping these straight: fewer potatoes means less mashed potatoes.

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10 points

They’re not interchangeable. ‘Fewer’ is for countable nouns and ‘less’ is for aggregate nouns, just like ‘how many’ and ‘how much’.

E.g:

Aggregate:

“How much sand? Less sand.”

Countable:

“How many grains of sand? Fewer grains of sand.”

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3 points

Oh believe me, I know. I agree.

but the argument nowadays is that common usage dictates that both are now “acceptable”, similar to how apparently “literally” now effectively means “figuratively” because everyone uses it.

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1 point

We don’t have to accept it.

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7 points

Along with that, I’ll add in “number” vs “amount”:

  • A shocking number of people get this wrong (countable)
  • The amount of confusion about it is distressing (aggregate)
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13 points
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