Fewer vs Less for Countable and Uncountable Nouns

Fewer and less both mean "not as much", so it is easy to see why they get swapped. The traditional rule is simple, and once you understand the idea behind it, the exceptions make sense too.

Countable and uncountable nouns

The rule depends on whether a noun is countable.

Countable nouns name things you can count one by one. They have a plural form and work with numbers: one word, two words, three words.

Uncountable (mass) nouns name things you measure rather than count. They have no plural in normal use, and you cannot put a number directly in front of them: water, sand, information, advice, luck, furniture.

A quick test: can you say three of them? Three tiles works, so tile is countable. Three sands does not, so sand is uncountable.

The basic rule

Notice how similar ideas can go either way depending on the noun. Money is uncountable, but coins and dollars are countable.

The everyday exceptions

Time, money, distance and weight

When a number describes a single quantity rather than separate items, use less:

• The game took less than two hours. (two hours as one length of time)
• It costs less than $10. (a sum of money, not ten separate dollar bills)
• We live less than five miles away. (a distance)
• The bag weighs less than 3 kilograms.

You would never say fewer than five miles, because you are not counting individual miles.

"Or less" and "or fewer"

Twenty-five words or less is extremely common and generally accepted, especially in instructions and limits. Twenty-five words or fewer is the strictly traditional form. Either is fine in everyday writing; careful editors prefer fewer when the items are clearly countable.

The supermarket sign

10 items or less is the famous example. Grammatically, 10 items or fewer follows the rule, and some shops use that wording. But or less has been used this way for a long time, and many style guides treat it as an accepted idiom. It is not worth an argument at the checkout.

Percentages and fractions

Follow the noun: less than half of the water, fewer than half of the players, less than 10% of the budget, fewer than 10% of the voters.

Related pairs that follow the same rule

Many vs much

• How many words did you find? (countable)
• How much time is left? (uncountable)

Number vs amount

• a large number of players (countable)
• a large amount of work (uncountable)

Few/a few vs little/a little

• There are few vowels left. (countable, meaning almost none)
• There is little hope. (uncountable, meaning almost none)
• I have a few ideas. / I have a little time. (some, rather than almost none)

More and most work with both kinds of noun: more words, more time.

Common mistakes

In word games

Both FEWER and LESS are valid Scrabble words, and so are their relatives FEWEST, LESSER and LEAST. And a small piece of trivia: LESS hides inside plenty of longer words, including BLESS, LESSEN, LESSON and UNLESS. Check any of them in the word checker.

Practice quiz