Australian women are having fewer children, later in life

Re:Australian women are having fewer children, later in life by vacri on Sunday November 29, 2015 @11:03PM (#10647615)

It's a grammatical rule in the same bucket as "i before e except after c" and "possessive apostrophes on words ending with s don't get another s"

"i before e" apparently has more words that violate the rule than follow it, and the possessive apostrophe rule runs opposite to spoken English: "This is James's book". The fewer/less thing is a general rule, not an ironclad one - there's plenty of examples where it sounds natural to use either.

I'd also argue that with a demographic the size of Australia (~22M), the number of children in it are not feasibly countable (like grains of sand), and as such, 'less' is fine. :)

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Re:Australian women are having fewer children, later in life by vacri on Monday November 30, 2015 @01:49AM (#10648157)

oh noes! I have fewer karma!

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Re:Australian women are having fewer children, later in life by vacri on Monday November 30, 2015 @09:20AM (#10649482)

Apparently some people disagree with this statement, but it's correct - karma on HN is definitely countable, hence 'fewer'. Of course, it sounds stupid, but apparently the rule is ironclad, to always be followed.

Which reminds me, the 'split infinitive' rule is yet another nonsense grammatical rule that is overapplied.

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