Home » Remote Guides Express » Should You Use Fewer?

Should You Use Fewer?

Elena Rostova • • 6 min read
Should You Use Fewer?

According to usage rules, fewer is only to be used when discussing countable things, while less is used for singular mass nouns

mass nouns
In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, or non-count noun is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete elements. ... Mass nouns have no concept of singular and plural, although in English they take singular verb forms.
› wiki › Mass_noun
. For example, you can have fewer ingredients, dollars, people, or puppies, but less salt, money, honesty, or love. If you can count it, go for fewer.

When should Fewer be used?

'Fewer' and 'Less'

Generally, fewer is used when the number of things is counted ("fewer problems") whereas less is used when the number is measured ("less trouble" or "less time").

How is fewer used in a sentence?

1 Women commit fewer crimes than men. 2 There seem to be fewer tourists around this year. 3 The detective discovered no fewer than 35 fingerprints. 4 No fewer than 10 students were absent through illness.

Elena Rostova
Author

Elena Rostova

Elena Rostova holds a Master's degree in Public Health Journalism. She covers groundbreaking medical research, holistic wellness trends, mental health awareness, and nutritional science.