Thank God/Allah/Buddha/The Flying Spaghetti Monster for The Plain English Campaign.I really don't know where we'd be without them. Their tireless work has not gone unnoticed in Casa Inchy and both myself and The Demon both feel grateful that they have managed, through hard work and determination, to get Tesco to change the wording on their express checkout tills from:
"10 items or less"
to
"Up to 10 items"
Well I'm glad that particular dog's dinner of confusion has finally been cleared up.
Here's what The Plain English Campaign had to say:
"Saying up to 10 items is easy to understand and avoids any debate, "Fewer" should be used when you are talking about items that can be counted individually, for example, "fewer than 10 apples" and "Less" is correct when quantities cannot be individually counted in that case, e.g. "I would like less water".
Have these people really got nothing better to do than wander around pointing out grammar, syntax and compositional errors in shop signs? Can you imaging living with someone like that? When did you last 'debate' whether you had more than 10 items in your basket?
"Does a pack of Yakult count as one item, or is it 6 separate ones?!"
Arseholes.
