The Rite? Word: Part 3
Susan Pierotti, Creative Text Solutions
In my campaign (cause? crusade?) for better communication, I offer this week’s contribution to misused words.
Number, amount, fewer and less have almost lost their original meanings in some people’s minds due to the adverse application by advertising. (Read my Part 1 blog for when to use adverse.)
Advertising has been around for centuries but really took off in the 1900s. Universal primary education in western society meant more people could read than ever before. Advertisers had a whole new huge market reading newspapers, billboards, magazines, and later on the internet, apps and email.
The most important rule in advertising must be to get the public to read the ad – obvious but true! Therefore the title must be short and snappy to draw the reader in. As a result, grammar and spelling rules were adapted, adjusted, bent and just plain thrown out the window in order to drive a sale. Words of two or more syllables were reduced to one: fewer became less.
However, there are pedants out there (I confess I’m one) who relish the fact that English has more descriptive words than any other language on earth. One of those pedants may be your future boss or HR officer, so learning when to use these words will always worthwhile.
Number and amount
Number: a quantity of something you can count.
Amount: a quantity of something you can't count.
You can calculate the amount of alcohol consumed at our last company picnic by the number of beer cans left on the lawn afterwards.
Of course it can still be confusing. I can't believe the number of beers I drank is correct, but so is I can't believe the amount of beer I drank. The difference is that beer comes in cans which can be counted but beer is a liquid, an uncountable total, so amount is also the correct usage.
Fewer and less
This is very similar to the number/amount problem.
Supermarkets get hate mail because some checkout aisles are described as “15 items or less†instead of “15 items or fewerâ€. However, appropriate communication is the issue here, not lexicographical accuracy. Those who use supermarkets are not necessarily linguistic scholars: “15 items or less†takes less (not fewer!) time to read for those who are in a hurry, isn’t as pedantic in tone and gets the message across – which is all that language, writing, grammar and spelling should be required to do.
Fewer: a quantity of something you can count.
Less: a quantity of something you can't count.
I know we drank less beer at our last company picnic than in other years because there were fewer beer cans left on the lawn afterwards.
Precede and proceed
Precede: to come before, a position.
Proceed: to begin or continue, an action.
If it helps, think precedence and procession. Anything that takes precedence is more important and therefore comes first; a procession begins somewhere, passes you and then continues on.
At the wedding ceremony, the bride processed down the aisle preceded by the flowergirl.
Still confused? The services of a professional proofreading and copyediting service will assist you with accurate and comprehensible spelling. Contact www.creativetext.com.au for further assistance.
