I would say it’s “fewer” not “less”, but every time I do, I get a lecture and downvoted.
Even though this time it’s quite clearly a case where “fewer” is the proper choice as “cop” is most definitely a countable noun (yes, I know there are exceptions, this is generally not one.)
Bring on the downvotes.
I agree with the sentiment.
? That’s usually a reference to British soldiers especially during the musket era. What’s it mean here?
You wanted a lecture, here you go:
You can use less for countable nouns, any of them. We’ve been doing it for literally centuries. In fact, it has never been used only for uncountable nouns (unlike fewer, which has generally only been used for countable nouns). Correct language is determined by what native speakers use on purpose, not what a textbook or teacher says.
At least read the Wikipedia and the dictionary if you want to keep a strong opinion about this:
However, modern linguistics has shown that idiomatic past and current usage consists of the word less with both countable nouns and uncountable nouns so that the traditional rule for the use of the word fewer stands, but not the traditional rule for the use of the word less. As Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage explains, "Less refers to quantity or amount among things that are measured and to number among things that are counted.”
OK, so I’m a prescriptivist and don’t agree. As mentioned in the paragraph before the one you quoted. Should we just let any old thing that slips into common usage to become the norm? Why not spell it “definately”? It’s very common and everyone understands it.
I’m all for evolving language, but the fewer words we use, the less elegant it becomes. IMO of course.
Should we just let any old thing that slips into common usage to become the norm?
Yes.
Why not spell it “definately”? It’s very common and everyone understands it.
I don’t think that quite meets the threshold yet, since most people who do that would still agree that it’s not correct. However, it’s close, and I wouldn’t be against recording it as an alternative spelling.
It’s a bit tangential, but English spelling is awful anyway, it bears hardly any relationship to the pronunciation, and I think it’s great if it evolves to be a bit less unintuitive.
I suppose you probably do accept the existence of American spellings, even if you aren’t from there? So the only difference between us is time, and how many people use a variant. Everyone is a descriptivist, some people just also think they should force their opinions on others, which is wrong. ;)
Common usage the the norm are literally the same thing.
Prescriptivists act like ‘the norm’ is some ordained perfection and everything in their own lifetime is an aberration, but that’s just temporal exceptionalism. Do you really think you just happened to be born at a time when the people writing style guides pointed at the be all the all of the English language and all advances are just corruption?
Hey man, do you want to be grammatically correct, or do you want to speak clearly to people who want to be a cop? Sometimes you have to make a choice.
Does lol have downvoting? Because, for some weird federation thing, I can definitely downvote and see others having been downvoted if their instance allows downvotes. Here, have a downvote. :D
Well when you have 81,000 gallons of cops you need less cops for sure. I think the sign is right.
Fewer.
Recently I’ve started to think that these and other similar battles are lost.
It just feels so petty. Not a single person reading “less cops” was confused by its meaning. I get fighting against misuse of your/you’re, its/it’s, etc. because they can make things harder to read. Fewer and less, though, have the exact same underlying meaning (a reduction).
I’m something of a grammar Nazi, but just like I support letting “whom” die, “less” and “fewer” might as well just be interchangeable. There’s no loss of language utility in doing so, unlike “literally”'s tragic demise.
Me trying to get people to say they “are doing well” not “doing good” when asked “how are you doing?”
Ahh, I went on a rant about this, and someone already did it for me much more concisely.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/fewer-vs-less
Essentially, fewer is normally used for discrete numbers of things (e.g. “fewer apples”, “fewer boats”, or “fewer cops”) while less is used for amounts (e.g. “less water”, “less sand”, or “less money”).
As noted in the above link, there are exceptions. However, the exceptions listed are all with “than” or “or” added. Specifically, it’s pointing put that while “fewer items” is correct, “3 items or less” is also considered correct.
In the case of the sign, it is referring to the specific number of officers in the city, so it should use “fewer”. Does it matter? No, not really. Why did I bother saying anything? I got a chance to rep grammar and quote Stannis Baratheon at the same time.
100% funded by the fire department lmao
Actually? Because good! Cops try and act like they’re an emergency service, like they’re first responders, when they’re not. So it’s good to hear some firies and ambos pushing back against that, all too often cops buddy up to them.
Don’t know if it was, but firemen tend to dislike police. I am also getting the idea EMT are getting to that point now. Close friends of the family have been in both of these fields for a long time. They, and all their friends, from their prospective work, feel derision for police. The firemen openly mocked them as long as I knew them, and the EMTs have been getting less, and less, friendly with the police in the last decade.
I was at my first rodeo a few weeks back and there was a tug of war between the cops and firemen. The cops won but they had an extra guy and somehow their huge anchor person at the back was twice as fat as the biggest fire guy. I don’t know how a 450-500 pound guy is a cop.
I don’t know what part of the world you’re in, but where I am, cops absolutely are referred to as first responders.
One actually showed up at my friends place just a few weeks back, and the complete bloody chucklefuck did CPR on her even though she was breathing.
Yes, that is actually a thing people say here in Australia. We don’t have “EMTs” here, they’re called Ambulance Officers, and that sounds kinda wanky, so we just say Ambo. It’s as widely-used here as Cop is for Police Officer.
By and large, you probably think it sounds funny bc it does in ur accent and I’d be laughing my arse off at you ☺️
Apparently an unpopular take, but wouldn’t the world (or at least, this country…) be a better place if the folks who became cops were the type of people who were also considering being a librarian?
Basically it seems like the ACAB mindset is in part self-fulfilling: “cops are bastards , I’m not a bastard, therefore I won’t be a cop.” Ok, so now some bastard who is less qualified than you becomes a cop, with no competition from you.
I get that the institution of policing in this country is deeply flawed; but is what we’re currently doing really working?
Maybe a progressive, grass roots “infiltration” of the police is doomed to fail, I dunno. But I’m not sure we’ll ever find out.
YouTube content creator and ex-police officer That Dang Dad notes that it’s not just the current killology-riddled precinct culture in which every civilian is a potential threat that drives pro-escalation attitudes in law enforcement, but also a degree of combat PTSD, as police are directedmto where social trouble spots occur, and have to deal with the potential of violence even when all the people in a situation are polite.
That Dang Dad quit law enforcement before coming to terms with how it affected his brain. He is a total police abolitionist now, saying not only that police officers are driven by the culture to be cold and cruel but also by the work to be afraid of everything, that danger might come from anywhere at any moment.
These days, we know the police are not here to protect the public, rather to serve as an occupying garrison for the ownership class, and while this was always the case, the DEA and war on drugs and the 1033 program have made this role even more clear. But it also means we’re not going to get a public serving response service until we are no longer occupied by the ownership class.
These days, we know the police are not here to protect the public, rather to serve as an occupying garrison for the ownership class, and while this was always the case, the DEA and war on drugs and the 1033 program have made this role even more clear.
American police. Police in different countries are structured in very different ways.
American police. I know that Scotland Yard is willing to bash journalist faces when the MPs are upset with the news. France has brutality problems similar the US if not so extremely common.
Maybe you’re speaking of nations other than those. I assume Liechtenstein law enforcement are polite and professional.
Maybe a progressive, grass roots “infiltration” of the police is doomed to fail, I dunno. But I’m not sure we’ll ever find out.
You not wanting to find out doesn’t mean it hasn’t been confirmed, over and over and over and over again.
but is what we’re currently doing really working?
No, that’s literally why people who say ACAB also want to abolish the police.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/officer-a-cab-confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-manifesto-for-the-abolition-of-the-police
want to abolish the police.
That’s stupid. Yeah, they’re bastards, but some sort of police is needed. We aren’t devolving into libertarianism where everyone hires private security.
We just need to cripple police unions, restrict qualified immunity, make body cams mandatory, have a separate oversight body, and make cops carry individual insurance (so no tax dollars pay out lawsuits, and bad cops become uninsurable). The problem will fix itself in months.
We do not need armed representatives of the state to have a peaceful country. Cop training is designed to create violence and escalate. Cops are tasked with jobs they are not qualified for, like interacting with disabled people. Cops are violent, cops are slave catchers, cops are used to stop social revolution and to jail/kill political dissidents. They murder, pillage, rape, and justify their violence as “needed” as if violence has ever solved the problem of “crime”. Crime is only a symptom of the system, and cops exist to mask those symptoms from the consciousness of the machine. Their “necessity” is far oversold. Any number of more specific and useful specialized jobs could be created to fill the role of cops. Fun fact: on average (between the states) cops only get 500 hrs of training (before they get to shoot civilians).
Still think the cops can be “fixed” by simple policy change (which requires ignoring the systematic issues with the police)? In 2005, the supreme court made a landmark ruling that boils down to “the police do not need to enforce the law, we leave it up to their own judgment” (read more: Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales.
We aren’t devolving into libertarianism where everyone hires private security.
The fact that that’s the only option you can imagine (and that you’ve clearly refused to further educate yourself about other options that definitely do exist, by reading any of the links provided, some of which address your specific brand of bullshit, or any other relevant information that is freely available to you, because they challenge said bullshit) is down to you, not a reflection of reality.
The problem will fix itself in months.
Lmmfao, sorry, not that I was, but I doubly can’t take you seriously if you honestly believe this, since it removes any last shred of doubt about your wilful ignorance…
The fact you can’t conceive of a world where police aren’t needed is genuinely sad. We did just fine without a militarized police force for hundreds of years. Do you think human nature has changed in the past 70 years? That we have suddenly gotten more inherently violent?
Personally, I think traffic cops are the only part of the police force I can’t justify getting rid of. Most other things seem like they should belong to the FBI, IRS, or the actual military. But traffic cops do actually important work.
I think another big issue is that cops are paid like shit. This immediately removes a lot of qualified people because for that effort you could make a lot more money somewhere else.
The only candidates you are left with are those who truly care for the community, and those who get off controlling it.
Funny enough, a few months ago, I took a photo of the same poster.
