Digital Analogue

That's one less problem for me

Just yesterday I was reading a post by Neal Whitman on less vs. fewer, wherein he detailed a situation where "fewer" is wrong even if you are someone that normally uses it. (I posted a comment, because hey, the less-vs-fewer issue is one that prescriptivists call me on all the time, as if they can't understand what I'm saying or something.)

Then this morning, I managed to hear an instance of exactly the issue in his blog entry. My coworker John was talking about the convenience of a certain setup, and said:

"There was one fewer person, peh, uh, people in the loop...."

He plugged in "fewer" according to the rule, stumbled because it sounded odd to say "one fewer person", tried to correct it to "people", that sounded weird too, but ended up going with it anyway. Just a few moments later, he uttered basically the same construction:

"...one fewer ^ person in the loop"

The caret indicates where he paused briefly, presumably re-running the same lexical choice debate, in the end settling on the other unsatisfactory choice.

Of course, I don't know that "one less person in the loop" would have felt any better to him, and it's hard to find such things out directly without running into "this is what the rule says" recalcitrance. But it sure sounds better to me.

"In our modern, first world country, there is no reason why we as a society can't afford to support old people retiring after a certain age. They've paid their dues, we've seen to that in the "credits" requirement. Living your last few years in restful peace and quiet, with a $700 check every month as a "Thank you" for having been a productive member of society all your life, should damn well just be a benefit of living in America, God's greatest gift to this brave new millennium." --Eva Sweeney