Grammar peeve of the day.

[tyggerjai]

"Less" and "fewer" are not interchangable. It's not fucking hard. Get it fucking right.

ETA: Failure to understand the difference between "discrete" and "discreet" is not an excuse, it's a symptom.

More pre-emptive editing: If you're not a native English speaker, you get a free pass, and an encouraging lesson if you'd like to ask, and congratulations if you already understand the difference. If you're dyslexic, then you may well understand the difference between discrete and discreet even if it's not obvious, so you also get a free pass. Unless you don't.

jai.
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Comments

[qamar.livejournal.com]

I know that this has to do with cardinal and ordinal numbers and that a discrete variable is part of this... but, my spelling is shocking... so I suppose discreet must be the 'shhh' type?

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Not so much cardinal and ordinal - cardinal and ordinal are both "many/fewer". But yes, "many/fewer" is for discrete quantities.

Discreet quantities are, exactly, ones that can keep a secret, and discrete people probably get lonely a lot.

jai.
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[hermia8.livejournal.com]

Hooray for you! Same goes for "amount" and "number" as far as I'm concerned.

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Nice, yes.

Many/much doesn't seem to be a problem, though, which is interesting.

jai.
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[sly-girl.livejournal.com]

Are they interchangeable?

[sacred-chao.livejournal.com]

In a similar vein, one of my personal grammar nazi tantrums is the number of people who don't understand the difference between "Not all people are stupid." and "All people are not stupid.". These are not functionally identical sentences. Anyone who can't manage this really needs to be locked up in a Venn diagram until they understand.

[mordwen.livejournal.com]

Yes, yay! I struggle so hard not to correct people all the time on this. It seems to be one of the more common errors these days. Along with "there's 13 of them" instead of "there are 13 of them". It's almost replaced the universal "of" ("bored of" and "could of") as my most hated error.

[sevjun.livejournal.com]

Ah grammar. I didn't realise there were so many sticklers out there.

My major weakness is effect/affect. Care to take that one on for me, Jai?

The difference is

[erudito.livejournal.com]

You have an effect on something but you are affected by something. You can be effective or you can have an affectation. Effect implies causes, affect does not. (Hence affectation because it doesn't go anywhere.)

Re: The difference is

[sevjun.livejournal.com]

Ah, looks like I have been using it correctly, but thank you for the clarification.