Is that the opposite of "outcourage"?

I've been looking for a job lately and saw this while wandering around one of the job boards:

I encourage you to make serious inquires into spell-check.

This is well done

This morning I found this cute flag bag on my desk. Inside I found a box of Ferrero Rocher and a thank you card. All of this was from an appreciative student, who left this for me after I helped her with a research project. Not only was I surprised by the gesture, but the handwritten note was a beautiful touch.

This well done example of expressing gratitude is what etiquette is all about.

Wrong word, wrong place

I took this photo in the restrooms at Jodrell Bank, of the University of Manchester. The correct word is "dispense", not "receive". Hence, the name of that thing over the sink that holds liquid soad, the soap dispenser. It's not a soap receiver; that's the person.

Local news

Whilst out and about on my daily travels I see a load of crap grammar. Shocking? It was to me too, when I first arrived in England in 1995. I naïvely thought all those entrancing English accents meant the speakers were somewhat well educated. Ha!

A fab example of this is our local "magazine", a publication pushed through our front door each month. It's titled My Abbots, and each month's issue contains misspellings, apostrophe crimes, and biased human interest stories offered up as news. On the homepage alone, you've got a missed apostrophe in the two "In This Months Edition" sections. Also on this homepage you've got local adverts, including one for Robins Rubbish...

The April issue of this periodical offers some more evidence of no proofreading whatsoever. On page 16, we see "Mother ran motorist of road in fit of rage". On page 22, we get to read about a "short listed" consultant. Page 34 offers "Aprils' top tips" for the garden. Page 94 give us an apostrophe for no reason at all; there's not even an S to trick you. And on page 57, I can't figure out what "Memorial match to in aid of Dan" means. Need I go on?

An oldie but a goodie...

People who know me may tell you that while I feel strongly about many rules of grammar, there is one misuse of words that irks me beyond all others…less/fewer. I think the reason for this is twofold: 1. It comes up all the damn time and 2. It has a rule to fix it that is both easy to remember and simple to apply.

It really is ubiquitous these days. For example, behold this photo taken by my fellow blogger KMS:

I believe this was in a little establishment called Starbucks. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Oh, and a Starbucks in England, so this is therefore an issue of international proportions (Queen’s English, my ass)

Fewer napkins. Actually, shouldn’t it be fewer serviettes over there? That’s an issue for another time though (An addendum: it has recently come to my attention that, apparently, it the great British class system of back-in-the-day, saying "serviette" was considered lower class while "napkin" was used by the upper class. Who knew?)

Here's another one that is particularly bothersome from TBS. That's the Turner Broadcasing System. It’s a superstation, people. Broadcasting nationwide. Anyway, they have a whole ad campaign touting:

Sigh. Fewer. Fewer commercials. Not less, fewer.

I understand that people like the dichotomy of more/less. It flows off the tongue. “More or less” is a popular English idiom. If asked, most people will tell you that the opposite of more is less. The two go together. Except when they don’t. Think of More as a player. Yes, he’s seeing Less, but they are not exclusive. More is free to hook up with Fewer whenever the mood strikes him.

And as I said, this would bother me less (not fewer) if there wasn't an easy way to determine whether you are using the correct word in a particular case. But there is, people.

Look, I know grammar can be difficult and annoying. To use who/whom correctly you have to identify the object of a sentence. I’m constantly debating the relative merit of using an comma vs. a dash vs. a semicolon. I often have to pause an think about whether the quote goes inside or outside the quotation marks (which incidentally, is another thing that varies depending on if you are in the U.K. or the U.S., and the Brit way makes so much more sense.) But less/fewer is so easy to figure out, it’s ridiculous

All you have to do is remember this: “Less money, fewer dollars.” Less is abstract, fewer is a measurable amout. If you can count the thing you are talking about and it makes sense, i.e. “one dollar, two dollars, three dollars” then you use fewer. If it doesn’t make sense: “one money, two monies, three monies” you use less. See? Less time, fewer hours. Less travel, fewer trips.

Let’s try it: one napkin, two napkins, three napkins. Fewer napkins. One commercial, two commercials, three commercials. Fewer commercials.

Less money, fewer dollars. Embrace it, people. It's the "righty tighty, lefty loosey" of the grammar world.

It all started with this facebook post:

(Names changed to protect the bossy.)

And so here we are. Ready and willing to comment on affronts to the English language and polite society.