Fewer or less, who or whom: usage rules worth keeping, and myths to drop

Words & word games · Published 2026-10-25

Cream letter tiles on a lined background spelling FEWER, LESS and WHOM in three rows — Fewer, less, whom: three words that start arguments about grammar. Illustration: Letterbench.

Some grammar rules make writing clearer. Others were invented by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century grammarians, never matched how good writers wrote, and survive mainly as a way of correcting other people. It helps to know which is which.

This guide separates the two, using what current dictionaries and style guides say rather than what someone's teacher once insisted on. Where a rule is a matter of house style rather than correctness, we say that too: much of what gets called "grammar" is really consistency.

Myths you can drop

"Never split an infinitive"

A split infinitive puts a word between to and its verb: to boldly go, to really understand. The objection was formulated in the nineteenth century, by analogy with Latin, where the infinitive is a single word and cannot be split. English has never worked that way, and writers had split infinitives for centuries before anyone complained. Merriam-Webster's entry for split infinitive is blunt: no reputable authority on usage, in Britain or the United States, bans it. Split one when the alternative is awkward or ambiguous. She decided to gradually reduce the dose is clearer than either to reduce gradually the dose or gradually to reduce the dose.

"Never end a sentence with a preposition"

This one traces back to the seventeenth century, when John Dryden criticised Ben Jonson for placing prepositions at the ends of sentences, again with Latin in mind. Merriam-Webster has repeatedly called the rule a myth; in 2024 a post saying so set off enough argument that NPR reported on the reaction. Natural English ends sentences with prepositions all the time: What are you looking at? That is the house we grew up in. Rewriting them as At what are you looking? sounds stilted, not correct. In formal writing you may choose to move a preposition for rhythm, but you are never required to.

"They can only be plural"

Singular they, for a person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant (someone left their umbrella), has been used in English for centuries. Merriam-Webster's entry for they now also records its use for a specific person who identifies as non-binary, and the dictionary chose they as its Word of the Year for 2019. Major style guides have broadly accepted it. If you avoid it, avoid it for reasons of house style, not grammar.

"Don't start a sentence with and or but"

Writers have done it since Old English. A sentence that opens with But often reads more crisply than one that opens with However,. The only real caution is overuse.

"Literally can only mean literally"

The intensifying use, as in I literally died laughing, irritates many readers, and in careful writing it is best avoided because it creates exactly the ambiguity literally exists to remove. But it is not new, and dictionaries record it; the Merriam-Webster entry includes it with a usage note. The practical advice is about effect, not legitimacy: if a reader might take you at your word, choose another word.

Rules worth keeping

Fewer and less

The traditional rule is fewer for things you count (fewer mistakes) and less for things you measure (less time, less water). It is worth keeping because it costs nothing and some readers notice. But know its limits. Merriam-Webster's usage guide for less points out that less is standard with many countable things that are thought of as amounts: money (less than £50), distance (less than five miles), time (less than three weeks), and phrases like 25 words or less. The supermarket sign "10 items or less" is defensible; "fewer than £50" would be the odd one.

Who and whom

Who is the subject of a verb; whom is the object. The test: answer the question with he or him. Who wrote this? He did, so who. To whom should I send it? To him, so whom. In conversation and informal writing, who in object position (Who did you invite?) is normal and nobody should be corrected for it. In formal writing, after a preposition, whom is still expected: the person to whom it was addressed. Hypercorrection is the commoner error now: whom in the candidate whom we think will win is wrong, because who is the subject of will win.

Its and it's, and the other confusables

These are not style choices. It's means it is or it has; its is possessive. The same goes for your and you're, affect and effect, principal and principle. Because each spelling is a real word, a spell checker will not help; our guide to homophones and real-word errors has a test for each pair.

The serial comma: pick one and be consistent

The serial (or Oxford) comma is the one before and in a list: red, white, and blue. Style guides disagree. The Chicago Manual of Style recommends it; the Associated Press style used by many news organisations generally leaves it out in simple series. Neither is wrong, but ambiguity can be expensive. In O'Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy (2017), a US federal appeals court read a Maine overtime law that listed exempt tasks without a serial comma, and found the missing comma made the exemption ambiguous; the dairy later agreed to pay $5 million to settle with its delivery drivers, as Bloomberg Law reported. Whatever your style, add the comma whenever a list could otherwise be misread.

"Begs the question"

Strictly, to beg the question is to assume the conclusion you are trying to prove, a translation of the logicians' Latin petitio principii. Most people now use it to mean "raises the question", and dictionaries record that sense too. Because some readers will object and others will be confused, the clearest course is to write raises the question when that is what you mean.

Spelling choices that are really style

Some apparent rules are just conventions that vary by region or publisher: -ize or -ise, judgment or judgement, towards or toward. These are covered in American and British spelling. The rule that matters is consistency within a document, which is easiest if you check against a single word list, as the Letterbench spell checker does when you choose American or British English.

How to decide for yourself

When you meet a rule you are unsure about, three questions sort most of them out:

Does breaking it create ambiguity? If yes (its for it's, a list that can be misread), keep the rule.
What do current dictionaries say? Usage notes in Merriam-Webster or the OED summarise the evidence. As our note on how a word gets into the dictionary explains, those notes report how the language is used, not what one person prefers.
Who is reading? A cover letter or a contract rewards caution; a message to a friend does not. Following a traditional rule for an audience that expects it is a sensible choice, as long as you do not mistake it for a law of English.

The rules that survive these questions are mostly about clarity, and they are the ones worth practising. Pair them with the habits in commonly misspelled words and you will have covered most of what careful readers notice.