‘Less’ versus ‘Fewer’

It jumps out at me when alternate and alternative are misused, but only bothers me if the offender is, for example, a reporter, a journalist or a presenter - in other words, someone who is paid to speak or to write, so (IMHO) should know better.

Earlier this week, I thought I heard a speaker on the radio talk about the need to find 'alternate' solutions to a problem.
It's possible that I just misheard, but it certainly caught my attention!

I don't think that 'less/fewer' really makes a difference to the meaning - it just irritates me because I know it's wrong, which is, of course, irrational.

gulligranny I didn't say that we should let things slide when there is a difference in meaning - in fact I said the opposite, and gave examples .

Another one that is getting more commonplace is 'hysterical' used to mean 'hilarious'. I do feel that uses like this diminish the language, as neither word is holding its (different) meaning.

How do any of these examples show that the standard of education has deteriorated?
You only have to randomly pick and read a thread on Gransnet to see that poor grammar isn't limited to the younger generations!

Don't get me started on this one. 'Less' and 'fewer' are among my greatest bugbears. Even on the news they use less instead of fewer. I think fewer is leaving the English language along with a lot of other words for example adverbs.

Just shows how even in these days of 'anything goes', we still betray our upbringing by the way we speak.
It also reveals how the standard of education has deteriorated...something to be concerned about.

Loose and lose is my absolute pet hate of grammatical errors. I'm teaching the grandchildren 'If you lose weight then your trousers will be loose' which I hope will help.

‘Affect’ and ‘Effect’- another gripe.

Also the use of ‘Amount’ when it should be ‘Number’-
“ A large amount of people”- grr...!

I'm another who gets very heated about less/fewer; I agree that language is evolving but that doesn't mean we should just let things slide as so often the use of the wrong word completely slews the meaning of what's being said.

One of my pet hates at the moment is the use of "deceiving" instead of "deceptive", drives me mad!

I agree about less/fewer, different from/to etc, and can add to the list

'Meet with' and 'work colleague' are irritating me just now, as a friend of mine uses both a lot, yet criticises the mistakes of others.

Times change, and language evolves, though. The examples above don't reduce the number of concepts we can discuss (do they? I don't think they do), or cause confusion about what is being said.

Mixing up 'infer' and 'imply', on the other hand, or 'uninterested' and 'disinterested' genuinely alter the meaning of what is being said, and are more likely to impoverish the language than choosing the wrong way of expressing something, such as 'would of' instead of 'would have'.

Well spotted! I thought I was alone in noticing the demise of fewer.
So at the beginning of a sentence, even written, has been mentioned before, but still grates.
As for lose and loose!! even well, ahem, educated people don't seem to know the difference.
We host many students and the most recent one has just graduated with a Masters (in science it's true) but she cannot write English. Does it matter? I don't suppose it does.

I agree about 'less' and 'fewer'; and about 'different from' and 'fed up with' being correct.

DH says 'different to' and it annoys me no end. However, as a friend said, it's better than 'different than'.

I also think that it's more important to write them correctly as speech is often less grammatical due to not having so much time to think before uttering.

A bit like when people say "different to" instead of "different from" or "fed up of" instead of "fed up with".

My English teacher would have said something too but I just think speech has altered greatly over the last 50 years and, in fact, I don't speak in quite the same way as my grandparents did.

Sadly I must admit that "fewer" and "less" used incorrectly irritates me too but I'm sure I must make mistakes that other people notice.

Oh I am glad you saw that too- I shouted out when I saw that can't tell you what I said as I was rude to Robbie Williams!!!