If you're not a native speaker, the simple rule is a good place to start, but be sure to consider the exceptions to it as well. If you're a native speaker your best bet is to be guided by your ear, choosing the word that sounds more natural in a particular context. Less is common following a number, as in "a package containing three less than the others," and is the typical choice after one, as in "one less worry."Ī definitive rule covering all possibilities is maybe impossible. (Some grocery stores have apparently been convinced by the chagrin, though, and use "items or fewer." They are still very much in the minority.) The use of less to modify ordinary plural count nouns (as in "made less mistakes") is pretty rare in writing and is usually better avoided, though it does occur frequently in speech.īut less is actually preferred in phrases like "an essay of 250 words or less." It's also-to the chagrin of some-the preferred choice in the supermarket checkout line's "twelve items or less" sign. Exceptions to the Ruleĭespite the rule, less used of things that are countable is standard in many contexts, and in fact is more likely than fewer in a few common constructions, especially ones involving distances (as in "less than three miles"), sums of money (as in "less than twenty dollars"), units of time and weight (as in "less than five years" and "less than ten ounces"), and statistical enumerations (as in "less than 50,000 people")-all things which are often thought of as amounts rather than numbers. Somewhere along the way-it's not clear how-his preference was generalized and elevated to an absolute, inviolable rule. The received rule seems to have originated with the critic Robert Baker, who expressed it not as a law but as a matter of personal preference. But for more than 200 years almost every usage writer and English teacher has declared such use to be wrong. Less has been used this way for well over a thousand years-nearly as long as there's been a written English language. One way to remember the symbols is that the larger, open side of the symbol should always face the greater number. This isn't an example of how modern English is going to the dogs. So, we can use the < symbol and write 23 < 80. The fact is that less is also sometimes used to refer to number among things that are counted. This rule is simple enough and looks easy enough to follow, but it's not accurate for all usage. It is a very peculiar choice from the manufacturer to do the UK/Nordic ISO layout with the extra letters but go with 104 keys of ANSI layout instead of 105 keys of proper ISO layout.While the supermarket cashier understood that the phrase "12 Items or Less" violated a received rule of grammar, she wished fewer people would complain to her about it. So your keyboard is kind of half ANSI half ISO and it is missing that specific key next to Left Shift which is the key on the Norwegian layout. The Left Shift is a departure from the ISO layout: the keyboard has the long Left Shift of US (ANSI) layout instead of having a shorter Left Shift and an extra key between Left Shift and Z. : below them on the same keys are for the pan-Nordic layout.īut. The legends, on your keyboard are for the UK layout, while the dimmer legends, and. The layout on Cepter Cosmo TKL is close to a ISO keyboard and it seems to combine ISO-UK and ISO-Pan-Nordic keyboards by having the legends for both ISO-UK and ISO-Pan-Nordic (combining Norwegian/Danish/Swedish-Finnish) layouts on the keys where the layouts differ from each other.
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