“There are less people in the room.”
People are countable — one, two, three. ‘Less’ is for amounts you can’t count.
Usage Entry 03 / 1605 60-second read Common
Less vs. Fewer
For things you measure versus things you count.
The comparisoni
“There are fewer people in the room.”
‘Fewer’ agrees with countable nouns. Supermarkets get this wrong; you don’t have to.
More examplesii
01
Less than ten employees showed up.
Fewer than ten employees showed up.
Employees are counted one by one — ‘fewer.’
02
Fewer time was spent on the review.
Less time was spent on the review.
Time is a continuous amount here, not discrete units — ‘less.’
The ruleiii
¶
FEWER for count. LESS for amount.
If you can put a number in front of it, use FEWER. If you can’t, use LESS. Fewer chairs, less furniture.
Notesiv
Origin
The fewer-vs-less rule is young — Robert Baker proposed it in 1770. Before that, ‘less’ covered both counts and amounts for a thousand years of English writing. Old English had *læs* (smaller quantity) and *fēawe* (few).
Register
Long-standing rule in edited writing. In casual speech, ‘less’ with countables (‘less people’) is common but still noticed.
Watch for
Plural units of measure (‘less than 5 miles,’ ‘less than $20,’ ‘less than two hours’) keep ‘less’ — because they refer to a single quantity, not individual items.
Memory aidv
Remember it like this
You count people, not water. Fewer people, less water.
A bit of historyvi
Old English had two words: læs for smaller quantity and fēawe for few. Both descended naturally without the modern distinction. Baker's 1770 proposal was prescriptive — an attempt to tidy up the language, not describe it — and the rule's life since has been the slow institutional adoption that prescriptive rules sometimes earn.
In the wildvii
Real-world-style usage — how this looks in a sentence people would actually write.
- The express lane is for customers with fewer than ten items — not ‘less than ten.’
- With less sugar and fewer calories, the revised recipe was still the best-seller.
Spottedviii
Specimens from the editorial inbox — lines that did, in fact, get published.
“Ten items or less.”
— A supermarket express-lane sign, nearly every major chain (and the subject of a 2008 Tesco reversal)
“We expect less passengers this winter than last.”
— A regional airline earnings call, 2022
Test yourselfix
Which is right?
Quick duel 4 questions · ~30 seconds
Which is right?