Less vs Fewer

Grammar chart explaining the difference between 'less' and 'fewer' with rules, examples, and exceptions for uncountable and countable nouns.

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Both less and fewer mean the opposite of more, but although more is used with both countable and uncountable nouns, this is not the case with less and fewer.

Less

Use less with uncountable nouns (things you can’t count, like water, milk, money, or time). Because less is used with nouns you cannot count, it will always be followed by a singular noun.

I have less money now.
Sam has less patience than his brother.

Fewer

Use fewer with countable nouns (things you can count, like apples, books, or friends). Fewer is always followed by a plural noun.

Fewer than ten guests turned up for the party.
There are fewer apples on this tree than on that one.

Note that native speakers sometimes use less with countable nouns in informal conversations (e.g., ‘less people’ instead of the grammatically correct ‘fewer people’), but this is not considered correct in formal English.

Exceptions

Money

The word money is uncountable, so we use less with this word. And, even though we can count money units like dollars or cents, we think of money as a whole amount. That’s why we say less than rather than fewer than when talking about dollars, euros, cents, etc.

I try to spend less than $50 on food each week.
When I was young, a cinema ticket cost less than 50 cents.

Time

Although we can count individual units of time and would use them with few in positive context (e.g., ‘a few minutes’, ‘a few hours’, etc.), we typically use less than in comparisons rather than fewer than.

It took me less than 10 minutes to clean the floor.
I spent less than 2 hours studying for my exam.

Weight and distance

Units of weight (grams, kilos, pounds) and distance (miles, kilometres, metres) are also countable nouns, but we normally use them with less than rather than fewer than in comparisons.

Sara is very thin; she weighs less than 100 pounds.
Gary lives less than 2 miles away from his office.

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Explanation

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