ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

The typically USian part is very fancifully using the word "savings" to refer to something that isn't a discrete physical object. No surprise given our other colorful turns of phrase, though.

11/10 for trying, nabisco, but ... sorry, i'm just not buying it.

xpost ... yes, there is something fascinating going on here, though, not just about US/UK grammar but about how that grammar reflects US/UK thought processes/approaches. i'll come back to it once we've had our introductory lectures on language and psychology :)

I'll put that 11/10 straight in my Compliment Saving Account.

I'm being serious, you know how many American frontier tall tales/folk tales involve precisely that kind of linguistic play/stretching of the plausible? Ever heard of Pecos Bill and his bronco, Widowmaker? Or Paul Bunyan, or Davy Crocket? Take your pick; see also a TON of Native American stories in which conceptual things take physical form. It's no stretch at all to imagine the "daylight savings" being gleefully portrayed as, say, gold bricks that can be locked up until the hero of the story tricks them back from the villain.

laurel, i'm going to come back and pick your brains [1] about this in the future. that's quite, quite brilliant.

[1] ha! a plural in the idiomatic form. with no logic whatsoever. i give up.

i am going to start an online bank called DYLGHT SVNGS
where's your investment capital?
it's in the fucking sun, bitches!

i have confused myself with why i find this so funny

(and aside from "guyses" i just say a bunch of westcoast things that i am only half aware of, hm)

Do you say "janky"? Seattle, who is actually from SF, says it's an SF thing for "cheap, poorly made". I like it.

Seattle is a girl's name

You're a girl's name.

I've heard jank but not janky

http://www.womanspapers.com/community/jan03/seattle2.jpg

I think I've only seen "janky" in print, not in conversation. But I didn't hear "hinky" until college.

I say "janky" all the time, and I am Midwestern.

i have never heard janky! while 'dude' and 'awesome' transcend international borders, so many many words don't make it across

'dude i don't know man i totally deked outta that scene before it got all heavy'
has prob been said by me

"Leaving" is a gerund, "leavings" is a noun for what has been left.
Through rigorous daylight-saving activities, we will create a savings of daylight.

???
I get the 'leaving'-as-gerund part: Leaving your vegetables is lazy and bad for your health. I could imagine a noun 'leavings' for what has been left, e.g. He put his plate on the floor and let the dog eat his leavings, but I've never heard such a word - we would say 'leftovers'. But you could still never say 'a leavings'! The dog ate a leavings from my plate, but ignored a leavings which was on my wife's plate. That's so wrong.

Exactly the same with 'save':
Saving money is a good idea in the long run. = ok
The cost of the new kitchen ate into his savings. = ok
He put some money away each month and built up a savings. = wrong, wrong, wrong!

But you could still never say 'a leavings'!

It could work. 'An innings' is perfectly OK, over here at least :)

NBS, you would never say "a leavings" because LEAVINGS IS PLURAL. You'd never say "a tomatoes" either.

So is it "less savings" or "fewer savings"?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Less, of course. 25% is less of a savings than 50%.

Ah.

fewer.

but i can totally understand why laurel (and presumably nabisco) would say "less".

(and presumably several million other americans, natch.)

If you're talking about savings in a bank, then surely "less". You don't count such savings one by one.

i do. "one, two, thr ... oh. two."

less savings fine less of a savings mental-sounding

NBS, you would never say "a leavings" because LEAVINGS IS PLURAL. You'd never say "a tomatoes" either.

That's exactly my point. That's why you would never say "a savings". Nabisco suggested 'leavings' and 'savings' had the same properties.

I have read an argument for using 'less' with percentages, I think something to do with it expressing a quantity of a whole. Less than 10% of universities, not fewer than 10% of universities.

I think either of those could be all right - in the first one, the 'less' applies to the percentage, and in the second it is 'fewer' universities. But, yes, footballers would not be allowed to give 'fewer than 110%' though it'd be funny if one said that.

your guyes' savingses' grammar theories are less convincing than a few things

I've no idea what anyone's on about anymore.

"Fewer than 110%" makes no sense, but "fewer than 10% of universities" does, because although we might not know it, 10% of universities is a fixed, definite number, so actually we're saying "fewer than 35" or whatever.

"A savings" is clearly madness but if British English has similar plural-sounding singulars then perhaps that's madness too.

If you think it's all got incomprehensible you've got another thing coming.

"Fewer than half of all Americans support the Iraq war"

"Less than half of all Americans support the Iraq war"

Fewer sounds a bit strange to me. Which makes me think it shouldn't be used with percentages either.

Ahhh a little help from the American Heritage Dict:

1. savings Money saved: a bank account for savings.
2. savings (used with a sing. verb) Usage Problem An amount of money saved: a rebate that yielded a savings of $50.

Usage Note: Traditionalists state that one should use the form a saving when referring to an amount of money that is saved. Indeed, that is the form English speakers outside of the United States normally use. In the United States the plural form a savings is widely used with a singular verb (as in A savings of $50 is most welcome); nonetheless, 57 percent of the Usage Panel find it unacceptable.

this is about that indian internet salesperson on that prank phone show, right?

internet service providings making the savings.

I know this is just Not How Language Works, but I am fine with "fewer" and a percentage based on the root:

- fewer than 50% of Americans have testicles
- fewer than 50 (of 100) Americans have testicles

Umm I guess note also that you'd say "50% of individuals have," hence "fewer" -- versus like "50% of the oil is," hence the corresponding "less"

See, I would recommend "less than half" per a half being a discrete thing by itself, but then check out the issue that raises with "support" -- "less than half of all Americans supports the war"? -- so possibly the best workaround is something like

Less than half of the American public supports the war.

If you are doing this in the United States:

501.433.1037

Please stop. The correct form is (501) 433-1037, and I don't have the time nor patience to copyedit such trivial stuff.

Hmmm, Google seems in two minds:

Results 1 - 10 of about 5,490 for "less than 50 percent of americans".
Results 1 - 10 of about 4,540 for "fewer than 50 percent of americans".

On the other hand, definite victory for "less" with "half":

Results 1 - 10 of about 905 for "fewer than half of americans".
Results 1 - 10 of about 21,800 for "less than half of americans".

Half is a singular thing, you can either have more than it or less than it. "Fewer than half" would require multiple wholes.

And percentage is a fractional thing...

the figure itself is "less than 50%", so when you're referring to the percentage itself then that's ok- ie the number of people that believe x is less than 50%

that figure then refers to a subset of a group, so when you talk about what that 50% of people believe then you're then talking about a number of individuals- is when it becomes normal (outside US, evidently) to use 'fewer than'.

i think?

This makes sense to me

Yep, makes sense to me too.

Is there anything wrong with this sentence?

Weren't they the highest-selling games last week?

It feels like there is, but I think I'm just being paranoid. It is a bit awkward, but...

Think I'd leave out the -