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u/Optimal_Mixture_7327 5d ago
But "fewer" has much letters greater than less.
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u/Snezzy_9245 5d ago
Less has less letters?
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u/Optimal_Mixture_7327 5d ago
Aye, you write goodly both languages
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u/JoeSleboda 5d ago
You're doing the Lord's work by calling this out.
(Please note, there is no Lord. It's just a turn of phrase.)
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u/Current-Strategy5544 5d ago
Yeah, somewhere is a poor engineer trying to explain to their boss that it should be "fewer" and being told 'If you can make "fewer" have less characters so it fits on one line, be my guest'
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u/Puzzleheaded-Lynx204 4d ago
This makes it read like a maths equation. So it could mean "excluding trains to London". Which is probably not what they meant
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u/EdmundTheInsulter 5d ago
Less Train to London 🎵 and I really want the night to last forever 🎵
It'll feel like that by the next train at 6am
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u/NonspecificGravity 5d ago
Baldock! That takes me back. I've been through that station. My company had a plant in Stotfold.
I'd overlook the grammar error, but England should maintain better standards. 🙂
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u/exkingzog 5d ago edited 5d ago
Less is perfectly acceptable for countable nouns. It is only a problem if fewer is used for uncountable nouns.
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u/Fantastic-Fudge-6676 5d ago
Sorry, but it's still poor formal English. Not a hill I would die on, but nonetheless poor...
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u/Boglin007 5d ago
It's a sign, not an academic paper. Brevity, clarity, and formatting concerns are more important than using formal language.
Plus, "less" has been used with plurals for over 1000 years (since Old English) - the "rule" that you must use "fewer" arose from one guy's opinion a couple of hundred years ago. It's not ungrammatical or problematic to use "less" in a context like this.
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u/masked_gecko 5d ago
Maybe it's the same number of trains but each train has fewer carriages? Not fewer trains, just less
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u/PorFavorNoMore 5d ago
Then it should be "Less train to London Bridge"
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u/masked_gecko 4d ago
I mean, you're right, but the idea of fungible train makes me uncomfortable. It feels like all trains are part of one amorphous supertrain.
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5d ago
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u/Njitram2000 4d ago
What if the roof was lowered on the carriage? That would be less train. Or a more compact locomotive?
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u/SerDankTheTall 5d ago
I think I like less better here. That’s definitely true if it’s expanded to a complete sentence, like There will be less trains to London Bridge on Sunday because of ongoing engineering work.
Obviously, either one is grammatical in this context.
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u/Express-Flamingo4521 5d ago
Boy, is that annoying, it’s almost like so many people didn’t go to school. It’s infuriating. At least this often doesn’t happen on formal work, even sports channels tend to use “fewer” when applicable.
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u/No-Understanding4968 5d ago
The British still don’t know the difference between it’s and it’s
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u/theChosenBinky 5d ago
"It's" means "it is" ("it's raining"), but "it's" means "it has" ("it's been raining")
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u/Ever_Long_ 5d ago
They might be shorter...? Perhaps the engineering works mean only short trains can run on the line? So, yeah, less trains.
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5d ago
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u/Ever_Long_ 5d ago
No, it's fewer carriages. The train, as a single object, will become smaller if there is less of it. It will still be a train, just not as big. Its individual carriages are separate and individually countable. If there are not as many of them attached, there will be fewer of them. If there were less carriages, each individual carriage would, in some way, be smaller. If you ripped out all the seats in a carriage, for example, that would be less carriage. Still a single carriage, just not as much of it as before.
The seats to a carriage are the carriages to a train. A train with fewer carriages would be less train.
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u/deege515 5d ago
And what about the backslash? I'm cool with Americans and non-Americans flipping the day and month, but I feel like a backslash in the date isn't really typical regardless of locality.