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Usage & Word Choice
Ruled slips filed under Usage & Word Choice.
Usage & Word Choice§
Fewer Versus Less: The Countable Rule in Practice
CorrectFewer for items you can count individually; less for quantities you measure as a mass.
Common errorUsing less with plural countable nouns, as in less people or less items.
ExceptionLess is standard with distances, sums of money, time, and in phrases like less than before or one less thing.
The rule is simple: fewer modifies plural countable nouns, and less modifies singular mass nouns.
Usage & Word Choice§
Who Versus Whom Without the Grammar Jargon
CorrectWho when it performs the action; whom when it receives the action or follows a preposition.
Common errorUsing who where whom is required, especially after prepositions or as the object of a verb.
ExceptionIn informal writing, who is often accepted even when whom is technically correct, and whom can sound stilted after than or as.
The distinction between who and whom comes down to case, just like he and him.
Usage & Word Choice§
Lie and Lay: Keeping the Two Verbs Straight
CorrectLay (laid, laid) takes an object: lay the folder on the desk. Lie (lay, lain) takes no object: the folder lies on the desk.
Common errorWriters use lay where no object exists, as in lay down for a nap, or they reach for laid when the past tense of lie is meant.
ExceptionIn the phrase lay down the law and in fixed idioms, lay is correct even when the object is implied rather than stated; lie also means to tell an untruth, a separate verb with its own forms.
The two verbs differ in one structural way: lay takes a direct object, and lie does not.