Fewer and less

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Fewer is one of those words that seems to be disappearing. I don’t know if it is a case of ‘if in doubt, just use less’ or it’s because people simply forget that it exists. Fewer does fulfil a role that less does not, though, so if you want to get it right here is a basic explanation and some tips to help you.

Explanation of the difference:
Use fewer and fewer than when referring to discrete things that can be counted (countable nouns) – e.g. fewer people, children, days, coins, fields.
Use less and less than when referring to a singular or mass (uncountable) noun – e.g. less humanity, food, time, money, land.

Two tips to help you remember:
1) Remember a phrase like this – fewer facts; less learning.
2) Apply this test: if you can add a number directly in front of the word and the phrase makes sense – e.g. 5 gold rings – then you should use fewer or fewer than; if it does not make sense – e.g. 5 money – then use less or less than. (If you said 5 bags of money, you would use fewer because the 5 makes sense when placed directly in front of the words bags.)

Here is where it gets slightly more complicated:
Use less and less than when referring to a number on its own and with specified expressions of time, money or measurement – e.g. the journey took less than three hours; she had less than two pounds in her purse; he lost less than ten pounds in weight.

A final tip:
3) Remember a phrase like this: less than two hours’ revision = fewer facts + less learning.

The business of being Shakespeare

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On one of my recent Google trawls I came upon this description of lawn weeds: Flowering weeds can appear attractive to the untrained eye, but they are an eyesore to someone who is striving to maintain a healthy lawn with curb appeal.

Put the curb [or better still, kerb] appeal bit to one side, substitute flowery words and writing style for flowering weeds and lawn respectively, and the sentence above could be an introduction to this article.

Now, I know what you’re going to say: Shakespeare was a prolific coiner of words and is considered one of the greatest exponents of the English language. Nor would I disagree. It is estimated that he introduced more than 1,700 new words to the vast enrichment of our vocabulary, eyesore being one of them. (Be careful what you end up defending, though. However much Sarah Palin may will it otherwise, pun intended, refudiate is simply wrong!) Today, nearly 400 years since his death, the business world has arguably become our Shakespeare. But where Shakespeare’s eloquence illuminates and delights, much of the self-important verbiage of business simply makes us cringe.

Let me give you an example: updation. It appeared one day in a work email to my partner, informing him of a recent update to a meeting item. Perhaps, I thought, English was not the writer’s first language. Perhaps this was, in fact, an impressive display of a non-native English speaker applying the rules of English grammar as he understood them? If so his educated guess, though incorrect, was to be admired.

Unfortunately, it was not. It was simply a made-up word.

But why? Our expansive vocabulary already permits various ways of saying the same thing; indeed, it’s thanks to one of them (update) that we’re able to make sense of this contrived offshoot. Nor can it be that update is somehow less explanatory or precise, if only because its substitute, being entirely made up, has no generally recognised meaning.

Unfortunately, I suspect, the reason for its unwarranted appearance has more to do with a misguided sense of style; that style, if you will forgive me, being in F.L. Lucas’ words ‘the natural pompousness of the official mind'(1).

Similar inventions, used to replace entirely appropriate and existent word forms just because they are ordinary, include terms like impactful, ongoing, multi-perspectivity, moisturisation and deplane. I have no doubt that the Campaign for Plain English can provide others. Then there is the equally gratuitous related practice of hijacking the meaning of existing words. Think impacted, visioning and sea-change, the latter another of Shakespeare’s creations (from The Tempest).

Lest you think that I’m simply against neologisms, let me offer you meh. I’m too old to use it convincingly myself – the bored disinterest that young people do so well. But how aptly meh does this, capturing the attitude precisely, succinctly and in a way that no other word does. Hence, I understand its recently granted status as a word. But, if I were to paraphrase George Orwell: It is often easier to make up words … than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning (2), you might understand why I am resigned to waking up one day to find that updation too has become a real word.

(1) F.L. Lucas (1955) Style: The Art of Writing Well, Cassell & Co. Ltd.
(2) George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946

Nothing is ‘for free’

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Fear not, this isn’t some comment on the absence or otherwise of altruism today. It’s a very practical piece of advice: don’t use the term for free.

Why? Because grammatically it makes no sense.

Free is an adjective. It is a word used to describe a thing (a noun). Simple is an adjective, silver is another, as are easy, rich and poor. You wouldn’t say for simple or for easy (you would say for simplicity or for ease). That’s because as phrases in their own right they simply don’t make sense. Nor does for free.

What you need to use is a noun. For example, nothing is a noun, as are gifts, services and offers. So say for nothing, or just free gift.

Not only will it distinguish you from the crowd, you are far more likely to win over potential customers like me.

Its or it’s

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If it’s a perennial worry working out when to use its or it’s, then here’s a tip that I hope will work its magic for you.

Simply clear your mind of all previous advice and follow these two steps:

a) look at the sentence in front of you; and,
b) say it to yourself, inserting it is in place of its or it’s.

If your sentence still makes sense when you add it is, then visualise the apostrophe replacing the second i. Another way of remembering is this: if it makes no sense to add is, it makes no sense to add an apostrophe.

For example,

Original sentence:  How can you tell if its/it’s the correct word?
Sentence check:     How can you tell if it is the correct word?
Correct sentence:   How can you tell if it’s the correct word?

Original sentence:  How can you tell if its/it’s spelling is correct?
Sentence check:      How can you tell if it is spelling is correct?
Correct sentence:   How can you tell if its spelling is correct?

You and I or you and me?

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If you struggle to remember whether to use I or me in sentences, here’s an easy way of working it out: Repeat the sentence to yourself as if you were the only person in it.

Here are two examples:-

Original sentence:                     This would be a great present for Graham and (I or me).
Sentence with only you:           This would be a great present for me.
Correct complete sentence:    This would be a great present for Graham and me.

Original sentence:                     It would be lovely if Fiona and (I or me) could join you.
Sentence with only you:           It would be lovely if I could join you.
Correct complete sentence:    It would be lovely if Fiona and I could join you.

For those of you who may be interested in the grammar behind it, I and me are personal pronouns. I is used when the person is the subject of the sentence, me when the person is the object.

Political correctness gone bland?

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In this second issue of my blog I am going to start by issuing a warning: I’m about to take issue with the word issue.

Too many issues? I agree. However, in my defence each of my uses of the word is pertinent: publications have issues, warnings are issued and disgruntled people like me do take issue with things.

But read any official report, political speech or departmental memo these days and you will see that the word has developed a few issues of its own, not least that it is now everywhere! We have medical issues, issues with young people, crime-related issues, planning issues, issues of accountability, issues for discussion, and so on. And so on and so on, because there appears to be no limit to its application. Understandable, given that it has become as explanatorily incisive as the word thing. Its overuse has rendered it almost meaningless.

But why should a word that dulls meaning be so popular?

I have two possible explanations to offer. The first speaks to our passivity and recalls the advice of George Orwell in his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language: ‘never use a metaphor, simile or other figures of speech that you are used to seeing’. His argument was that to do so could be considered ‘lazy thinking and writing’.

The second implies motive and argues that in these times where the choice arises, appearing conciliatory is preferable to being unambiguous – hence the title of this post. Thus, a sympathetic way of interpreting the popularity of issue is its ability to deploy euphemism. For example, I might not know exactly what issues of accountability are being encountered when I read of them, but thanks to the euphemistic undertone implied I can be fairly certain that they are ‘not a good thing’.

But, hold on. Euphemism is defined by The Chambers Dictionary (12th Ed.) as ‘a figure of rhetoric by which an unpleasant or offensive thing is described or referred to by a milder term’. Are the words that issue has supplanted – condition, complaint, problem, question, difficulty, obstacle, to list just a few – truly so unpleasant or offensive as to be in need of toning down?

Read any department’s customer feedback policy and we are likely to be told that it views our complaints as affirmation of its culture of openness and self-improvement. Delve into a self-help guide and chances are that we will be exhorted to acknowledge our problems as a first step to resolving them. Are you offended by their language? I suspect not. Now re-read the sentences above, replacing complaints and problems with issues. Have they ceased to make good sense to you? I suspect so.

As for why any of it matters, whether you agree that language shapes thought on any deeper intellectual level, the recurring use of one word to encapsulate a range of meanings must surely at the very least blunt it. So too, our ability to communicate our thoughts. How can we motivate our audience to act, or even just understand or empathise with us if we fail to be clear?

And, what if you do believe that language shapes thought? Will suppressing all explicit reference to the concept of problems mean that politically the need to deal with them as such will eventually cease to exist too? Well on that note, let me leave you with another piece of Orwellian wisdom:

It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is quite simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good’ for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well – better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good’, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning; or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words – in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston?

From George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, first published by Secker and Warburg in 1949.