Even if you go in for prescriptive grammar, less and fewer were never strictly divided. The distinction actually came to us through one Mr. Baker's expressed preference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less#Historical_usage
Consider the less v. fewer debate. Yes, several hundred years ago, it was just fine to say "less corrections." However, for whatever reason, the upper crust decided that "fewer corrections" both looked and sounded better. Consequently, "less corrections" evolved to be less correct. My inner smartass wanted to say "fewer correct", but that would be a silly joke.
It's like Russian. If you speak French, you can understand many Russian words. This isn't because French and Russian are linguistic cousins. Rather, it's because French was the language of nobility and words trickled down.
Or heck, we could talk about the word "you." You was originally formal, whereas "thou" was more relaxed and informal. Yet, today, if I started a comment on Hacker News with, "I fear thou are wrong", it would seem needlessly formal.
To conclude this long mess (it was supposed to be four lines and turned into paragraphs), language evolves constantly. Though certain distinctions didn't exist in earlier English, they exist now. However, if you know much about the history and formation of English, you should be less pedantic. It should also make us much more tolerant of people for whom English isn't their native language. We speak an intensely complex language with random rules that apply in some cases and not others.
Thank heavens we don't have to compile our language before we speak it...:)
Whether "less [count-noun]" is acceptable depends on granularity: "less than two adverbs" is acceptable whenever it feels alright to you to just abstract adverbs into a pure number. "less than two corrections" is not acceptable to most people because corrections don't lend themselves to being abstracted into a number.
Languages are not random. It's just that prescriptivist get hung up on random subsets of language and pretend they've seen all of it.
"Which is more correct? This or that?"
There's even "most correct" as in "it is most correct to choose..."
This is due to the simple fact that in many non-trivial fields, correctness is not absolute and thus multiple correct choices or outcomes are valid. Local preferences might recognize this, but prefer one over the other. In noun usage, this is a carryover from verb usage
"My shoes were mostly corrected by the cobbler." is perfectly fine, so users of English also find that "The fit of my shoes is mostly correct." is also perfectly valid usage.
More examples:
Which partial phrase emphasizes, and persuades better a point better (as a matter of rhetoric)?
"It is most correct to take this option."
"It is a preference to take this option."
Of course the former is stronger than the latter.
"correct" clearly grades.
If you're specifically talking about my use of "more correct", let me try another example of why I think "more correct" is useful nonsense. I'm Canadian. Therefore, I use spellings like "colour" and "honour".
However, if I'm writing something primarily targeted to Americans, I switch to honor and color. It isn't that colour becomes incorrect when I write for an American audience. To me, color is always wrong. But, if I want to influence an American audience, color will be the correct spelling they're looking for.
When I'm obsessing over edits, especially when underlying rules are unclear (or non-existent), shades of correctness are the best metric I can find. Do you have another?
You might instead write "closer to correct", but, how clunky.
Meanwhile, you can assign a mathematical measure of partial correctness for, say, sets of statements, simply as the fraction of correct statements over the total. In linguistics, you can assign measures to both acceptibility and correctness simultaneously by taking the fraction of people who "accept" a construct as "correct".
I'm not even sure how many levels of meta I'm at, so I'm done.
Correct \Cor*rect"\ (k[^o]r*r[e^]kt"), a.
[L. correctus, p. p. of corrigere to make straight,
to correct; cor- + regere to lead straight: cf. F.
correct. See {Regular}, {Right}, and cf. {Escort}.]
Set right, or made straight; hence, conformable to
truth, rectitude, or propriety, or to a just standard;
not faulty or imperfect; free from error; as, correct
behavior; correct views.
[1913 Webster]
Always use the most correct editions.
--Felton.
If you are building truth tables, then something is either correct or it isn't. But that's certainly not the case when using words to communicate ideas between humans.
After all, haven't each of us taken a multiple choice test with instructions to choose the most correct answer?
It's no different than choosing the most appropriate programming language for a given project; plenty will work, but ultimately one is the most logical given who will be writing it, reading it, using it, maintaining it, deploying it, etc.
When something was both not historically incorrect, and not considered incorrect by many current people, the arguments people make about it being wrong starts to crumble slightly.
Language is the same. If your goal is to communicate, the most easily understood choice is best. Some grammatical quirks do nothing to hinder comprehension and don't need to be pointed out (ie - less/fewer). Others are far more toxic.
And the results are in: http://i.imgur.com/6KMvhIa.png
(It appears that this comment itself is only good enough when I include this sentence.)
But can we really trust this guy for historical precedent? He burnt the cakes!
Maybe he was gluten intolerant.
Some discussion:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001702.h...
The thing about pedantic snark is that, whether it is right or wrong in its details, it almost always comes from a place of hostility and is thus a form of assholery. It indicates the individual "values" good grammar or whatever a helluva lot more than they value respect or politeness.
I didn't realize that writing at a 5th grade level was the pinnacle of writing.
What is with it's fear of adverbs?
vs
When you use too many adverbs in your writing, you reduce a well-written piece to a confusing mass of words.
But when adverbs come up naturally in expressing an idea, I'd hate to suggest to anyone that it's a bad thing!
Great writing rests on the foundation of bold verbs and nouns.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Stone-Cold-Truth-WWE/dp/1476751684
20 of 20 sentences were too easy to read. Try combining all of your sentences into one page-long complex-compound sentence by overusing comma run-ons and semicolons and em-dashes and ellipses and strings of conjunctions.
It reminds me of advice I commonly get when I started writing: borrow a voice, and grow your own out from that. This is a great way to do that, I think -- it's internalizes the process and makes it a form of muscle memory. That sort of second-nature shit is invaluable to finding yourself. Yum yum yum.
Seems like this kind of tool would be better for shorter pieces, say under 3K words or so.
This also violates current usage conventions for handling numbers in text.[1] Figures are only meant to be used in greater numbers (a rule of thumb is anything over 30, but I think I read that in a David Foster Wallace text, fwiw) with more complex verbal / textual representations - that is, not "two".
[1] http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/hem_river.html
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/1t9571/wp_so...
I really wanted to hate it, but couldn't.
All the cases listed here: http://writing-style-guide.papercheck.com/~paperch1/index.ph...
They did a great job, it's a nice app.
I was thinking about giving some Joyce a pass through this...
9 of 46 sentences are hard to read. 19 of 46 sentences are very hard to read. 12 adverbs. Aim for 11 or less. 8 words or phrases can be simpler. 12 uses of passive voice. Aim for 9 or less.
Aside from Hemingway, it's fun to paste in other classic literature and see what the tool makes of it. It hated Lolita.
Sometimes I saw very good comments which are very long but informative. It takes us time to compose and read, but that's more valuable than short sentences.
What is a better way for communication?
(And yes, I used the app to make sure to write this with passing marks.)
But seriously, this is a nice, simple way to point out some general rules of thumb for improving writing, although I would love for it to be less proscriptive. Not every long sentence is a bad sentence, not every passive-voice sentence is a bad sentence, and not every adverb is a bad adverb.
Oh, and by the way, the copy editor in me can't help but notice that an app that's intended to help you improve your writing tells you to "Aim for 2 or less" adverbs, rather than "Aim for 2 or fewer."