What's the most petty/pointless/pedantic hill you're willing to die on?

NotNotMike@programming.dev to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 456 points –

For me, it may be that the toilet paper roll needs to have the open end away from the wall. I don't want to reach under the roll to take a piece! That's ludicrous!

That or my recent addiction to correcting people when they use "less" when they should use "fewer"

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Petty hill

If you keep correcting very minor grammatical mistakes when I am speaking, such as “you mean fewer, not less”, I will just stop talking to you entirely

Turns out language is pretty damn flexible. Even if I made an obvious mistake, you meant what I knew.

It's simple though. If you can count it, it's fewer. If not, it's less.

Fewer people. Less noise.

That isn't a grammatic rule. Some guy in the recent past was like "I think it sounds better that way." It was his personal preference.

That's all.

They've always been used interchangeably, for as long as English has been a written language.

People who love to "correct" this are just showing ass to anyone who knows any better haha.

This is a way in which you can discredit any attempt at proposing correct or logical language use. Yes, language changes. Your assertions are still debatable. English is ambiguous enough as is. It's not 'showing ads' to propose some form of consistent or logical usage of words. I'm happy to count that as a petty hill I'm willing to die on.

And since we're being petty, it's either 'grammatical rule', or 'Grammar rule'.

This is a way in which you can discredit any attempt at proposing correct or logical language use

It absolutely is not. You're just talking out of your ass.

The same one that you are, in fact, showing when you demand that the personal preference of some random stranger is the way that everyone has to talk from now on. Ludicrous.

You need some salsa for that chip on your shoulder, or is there another reason why you're getting so personal?

Don't answer. I don't actually care.