This one is for free, because this is an error I’ve been seeing far too frequently of late.

In my real life, I’m not just a grammar geek—biting the heads off dangling participles!—I’m also a techno-geek. Relevance, you ask? Actually there is some.

Quantization is the quality of existing as individual packets of something, or existing as a continuous mass. This relates both to quantum mechanics, where light is made of particles called quanta, and to grammar. Yes, grammar. Stop rolling your eyes.

Specifically, it relates to the use of less and fewer. “Less” is used for non-quantized nouns and adjectives, while “fewer” is used for quantized nouns and adjectives. Confusingly, “more” is used for both quantized and non-quantized nouns and adjectives. You’re safe with “more.”

As an example, consider peanut butter. Peanut butter is non-quantized. If you have peanut butter and give some away, you have less peanut butter than you started with. However, if your peanut butter is in jars, it’s different; jar is a quantized noun. You can have “six jars,” but you cannot have “six peanut butter.” “Six peanut butter” is such blatantly bad grammar that even Microsoft Word can pick it out as such.

Some nouns, such as “mess,” are non-quantized until they are made plural. It would be correct to write “less mess” or to write “fewer messes,” but “fewer mess” makes no more sense than “fewer messy.” Messy, of course, being a non-quantized adjective.

How can one tell the difference between a quantized noun and a non-quantized noun? Assign a number to it, as in “six peanut butter,” which we have established doesn’t work. “Six blue” likewise shows that the noun is non-quantized. However, “six mistakes” clearly shows that the construction “less mistakes” is grammatically incorrect.

I’ll stop now, before brains begin to throb. Thank you for your kind attention.

—Valerie