One supermarket in the UK changed the signs for its Express Till from 10 items or less to 10 items or fewer. For some reason it has decided to change back to the original wording. When they changed, I wondered whether it was in response to complaints from the public. Now I have no idea why they have changed back.
Meanwhile, another supermarket chain has, sadly, started putting up signs for Kids video's. Two errors for the price of one?
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
"Kids video's"? Yech!
The supermarket changed the wording from less to fewer because fewer is proper English.
The items in the grocery cart are countable and therefore require a countable quantifier. Saying 10 or less is just incorrect English.
10 or fewer, that's the way to go, man.
It then changed it back to 'less'.