• nova@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It just feels so petty. Not a single person reading “less cops” was confused by its meaning. I get fighting against misuse of your/you’re, its/it’s, etc. because they can make things harder to read. Fewer and less, though, have the exact same underlying meaning (a reduction).

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I’m something of a grammar Nazi, but just like I support letting “whom” die, “less” and “fewer” might as well just be interchangeable. There’s no loss of language utility in doing so, unlike “literally”'s tragic demise.

          • samus12345@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I’m aware, but it was done so sparingly, as opposed to being used to mean its opposite far more than its original meaning nowadays.

            • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              That is how language works. It starts off small, then it catches on over time, and after a long time has passed, it either gets filtered out, or it becomes commonly used. The case for literally being used, for reasons other than its original one, started a couple hundred years ago. Today it is super commonly used that way, as it didn’t get abandoned. You are mad at the nature of the beast.

      • Rinox@feddit.it
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        5 months ago

        Can we at least stop allowing people to use ‘of’ instead of ‘have’?

        It doesn’t make any sense and I need to read the sentence twice to understand what they’re saying.

    • ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      This one isn’t even real. “Fewer” can only refer to countable things, but “less” can refer to both countable and uncountable things, and has been used that way for hundreds of years. It has never been wrong to say “less.”

    • tacosanonymous@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      I’m a grammar loving curmudgeon. Even I check myself more often than not after I realized the kind of classist tones that come through when arguing against lexicon.

    • Dagnet@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Me trying to get people to say they “are doing well” not “doing good” when asked “how are you doing?”

    • kspatlas@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Language prescriptivism is a useless endeavour, let the language evolve as it wants, I personally don’t mind the use of less in this situation