Even MORE pet peeves ...

Adjectives / Adverbs.  Good / Goodly / Well .... Well!

You say poe-TAY-toe and I say poe-TAH-toe (and Dan Quayle can’t spell it either way ... now is that EE-thur or EYE-thur?) ...

I don’t feel so good.

A pet peeve that comes up less often – it arises fewer times, that is – is the distinction between “less than” and “fewer.”

As a rule, if you can count it, use “fewer.”  If not, “less.”  As in:

   I have less money in my pocket than I had yesterday.
           vs.

   I have fewer coins in my pocket than I had yesterday.

A person gets “less” sleep, but not after counting “fewer” sheep for “fewer” hours than the night before.

My young bride actually went into a major grocery chain one day and pointed out that the sign over the Fast Lane was incorrect:

   “Less Than 10 Items Please”

A couple weeks later, they’d actually changed the signs, replacing the offending “Less” with the grammatically correct  “Fewer” (the latter seeming, perhaps, pretentiously less palatable).

A similar pet peeve arises when writers incorrectly choose “between” over “among.”  When two people talk, the discussion is between them.  When three people talk, they talk among themselves.

If offered candy, a child may choose between chocolate and cherry ... or among chocolate, cherry and licorice.

So much of writing is about choices.  A writer will inevitably report a discussion between members of the President’s Cabinet ... which technically describes a discussion between two officials (the Attorney General and Secretary of State, for example), rather than a discussion among the larger group.

But sometimes (especially in politics), one settles for what one reasonably is able to achieve – “Do your best and leave the rest,” as my wife says with fewer words and less officiousness.
Take the Trumans, for example.

The story may well be apocryphal, but the President’s daughter apparently heard Harry S telling some reporters that he was going to throw some manure on the East Lawn to get it to green up.

“Mama,” said Margaret Truman, “can’t you get Daddy to say fertilizer instead of manure ... after all, he’s not a Missouri farmer anymore – he’s President of the United States!”

Bess Truman put her arm around her daughter’s shoulder and calmed her with a wise look:

“Margaret, my child, leave well enough alone.  It’s taken me 25 years to get him to say manure!”

Do your best, and leave the rest.

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Parting Shot: The devil’s in the details ... Harry “S” Truman is the President’s real name, even though it was widely presented as “S.”  It seems Give ‘em Hell Harry’s parents couldn’t decide between two grandparental names – Solomon and Shippe – and compromised on the letter only ... no period.  And “Margaret” Truman?  Actually Mary Margaret Truman, by birth. 

Next: English as a foreign language

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