Saturday, March 15, 2008

One FEWER

I've been listening for months to these advertisements for Gardisil, the HPV vaccination for girls. While I'm thrilled they've developed these vaccines, I'm totally disappointed in with the advertisers complete disregard for grammar rules.

If you can count it, it's fewer.
If you can't count it, it's less.

For examples, you may know fewer facts about a topic, and consequently, you have less knowledge. Therefore, it should be one fewer -- as in one fewer girl/woman with HPV. I get that it sounds better to say "one less" than "one fewer," but how is the world to learn when these commercials go on and on with this?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think you hit us with books if we got them mixed up. Haha jk.