An article recently appeared in The Times whose author was trying to make the point that the disctinction between "less" and "fewer" was becoming so blurred that the word "fewer" might as well be abolished.

A reader who clearly disagreed with him wrote a letter in which he said (and I am sorry that I cannot quote verbatim since I don't have the article to hand):

'One important distinction between the words clearly applies when the Editor of the Times could ask a writer to submit "less pedantic articles" or "fewer pedantic articles"'.

Hear, hear, say I!

Richard English

Oh, Richard, I couldn't agree more!

If you saw my post about that (I believe in "pet peeves"), you will see that our managing editor wrote a Style Book for us to use. In her attempt to distinguish the 2, she misused fewer! When I corrected her, she said that she had only hoped that the masses would get the general idea. General idea with grammar? Generally, I will. stick my period!!! Somewhere?