July 7, 2025

'Less' and 'Fewer'

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A lot of people think that, in formal English, "less" is for mass nouns, like "music," and "fewer" is for count nouns, like songs. But it's more accurate to say "less" is for singular nouns and "fewer" for plural. So, when you want to be proper, you say the express lane is for 10 items or fewer because "items" is plural, but if you take one item out of your cart you have one less item, not one fewer item.

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Possessives of names ending in S
Posted by June on July 7, 2025
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Most people regularly write stuff like “We went to James’s house” without stopping to think whether it should be “James’ house.”

In many areas of life, such cavalier carelessness is a bad idea. But in this case, not thinking is actually better than thinking. That’s because possessives, and especially possessives of singular words that end in S, can drive you nuts if you think about them. Most people are sure that there can be only one right way to make James possessive. But in fact the rules are a mess, the language referees disagree, and on any given day you might see James’ in a newspaper and James’s in a book.

Here, according to some of the best-known language guides, are examples of correctly formed possessives of singular proper names ending in S.

 Chicago Manual of Style
James's words

James's seat

Associated Press Stylebook
James' words

James' seat
BUT
The boss's words

The boss's seat

Strunk & White's The Elements of Style*
James's words

James's seat

BUT

Jesus' words

Jesus' seat

The Elements of Style is not an official style guide, nor do experts consider it a real language authority. But millions of people who own the book don’t know that. So it adds to the conflicting advice floating around out there.

What should you do? Pick a style — either the “book style” of writing James’s or the “newspaper” style of writing James’ and just use that form consistently. If you really need your writing to be bullet proof, you could consult a copy of AP or Chicago. But otherwise, just pick James’s or James’ and use it consistently.

June Casagrande is a writer and journalist whose weekly grammar/humor column, “A Word, Please,” appears in community newspapers in California, Florida, and Texas. more

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