Do People Count or Measure Time?

Would you say “fewer than six months” or would you say “less than six months”? With time and distance measurements, you can go either way, depending on what you mean. Are you measuring time or counting units of time? This guy gets it wrong:

He’s counting whole months, so he should say “fewer,” right? What do you think?

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—A continuation of the story arc from the last post:

That’s the end of the arc, so only these two posts on the subject.

I’ve never heard the term “indirect passive” before. What would you call what he said in the first panel?

I might say that he was hinting…

The tendency in English is for words often spoken together to become hyphenated, then become a compound word. For example, “today” used to be “to-day.” And “pick-up” truck has become “a “pickup truck.”

Here’s another example, from July of 1941. First and last panel:

Do you ever see the word hyphenated any more?

(The first rule is to be clear.) Last speech, on the TV:

The second rule is to be concise. That means no more words than necessary. (But all the words that are necessary.) I remember, as a kid, watching a conversation in a movie about Joel Chandler Harris. Joel is told by his mentor that “if you can take out a word and not change the meaning, take it out.”

“Day” is a lot more concise than “24-hour time period.” duh