Less than sounds way better to me here, perhaps because we can use fractions of percents, so where does the countability end?

I say "less", because it refers to the percentage, which is a continuous thing (could be 22.64% of instructors, for example) and not "countable" per se.

EDIT: pony is slow as usual

My thinking is that the "less/fewer" refers not to the percent, but to the people (of whom the percent is measured).

Formally, it has to be 'fewer than'.

In neither case should the verb be in the 1st person singular form.

You have a long noun phrase as the subject of the verb, which could never be considered uncountable, as you will always be able to count how many teachers.

Compare: "less than 30% of the money I spend on whores actually benefits the whore"

Wrong.

Yeah, I'm teaching in Georgia and their language has 4 sounds that are near impossiable for me to voice. Proabably because they all come from from far behind the throat (sorry for the misspells BTW, I don't have spell check on my phone).

I know what you mean about Georgia, but I find it harder to understand people in rural South Carolina.

I'm guessing you really dont as I'm praticaly half a world away from the States. Though, coincidentaly, it is about the same size as SC.

No

U

2012 Bulwer-Lytton winners are out. I still prefer the Lyttle-Lytton. The other day, I wrote an exercise sentence, a nouveau roman parody, that's Bulwer-like.

The tea saucer hits the countertop and wobbles gyroscopically, violently, opposite sides rising and falling alternately, making a gentle but persistent scraping noise as the tiny ring-shaped protrusion under its body grazes polished wood, fruit punch droplets on the saucer surface stuck in a kind of confused limbo, unsure of which segment of circumference to slowly ooze their way towards, drops oddly glowing in the kitchen’s dawn light, reminiscent of the bioluminescent guts of a firefly, little beads of light awkwardly zigzagging some millimeters here and there beside their original positions on the porcelain, as the saucer spins and wobbles and scrapes and slows and comes to an eventual gentle stop.

Talking about 'giving up the fight' against grammatical misdemeanours, and I'm not sure I'll get much support on this, but using 'so' for new information is really ****in with my tapestry. It's pandemic.

For example (from Andy Murray's FB): "Not something I do a lot, but the Burberry show today was so impressive."

I don't know a thing about the Burberry show, it's new information to the writer's audience, thus 'so' is incorrect.

I tried to hammer this out of a particular student last year; I even sent him a detailed email about it giving examples (as I'm required to do as part of his feedback), but he completely ignored me and continued using it all over the place. Had to give up his class as a result. Not having that **** in my life.

I'm confirmed seething.

Im sorry, but your piece flows about as well as a cannister of thick molassis being filtered through a mosquieto screen as one, single coherant drop, moment by agonizing moment, falls imperecievably closer towards its final conclusion forcing all those that have had the pleasure of experiencing the above proze to puzzle in wonderment as to what its muze was and why did it hate its admirer so much?

I saw what I considered to be a strange word usage in this morning's USA Today newspaper. In the upper left corner of the front page is a picture of a kid having a school lunch and the caption says something to the effect of "Joey enjoys a plate of lunch." I can't remember the exact caption, so I'm paraphrasing, but the part that caught my eye was "plate of lunch."

Does this seem strange to anyone else? Is it proper usage? Can you have a bag of dinner? Doesn't really bother me but it was just a visual speed bump as I scanned the page.

I guess lunch plates exist, but they're not something typically "enjoyed."
Like a dessert tray. I see "Entree's." Anything else?

A) We want to be your friend.
B) We want to be your friends.

What's right?

Definitely B. Not sure if A would be considered sort of OK with "we" being interpreted to mean "each of us".

That's it. Included most of the menu for context (and as a clue for possible identification).

What usually happens,as happened in this case, I point out the problem to a manager who simply laughs, agrees, and walks away and forgets about it. I don't understand how they sleep at night.

I haven't read much of this thread but the title makes me smile whenever i see it in OOT

That menu reminds me of one I cannot stand: CEASAR. Saw it in the salad aisle yesterday at Trader Joe's lol.

My roommate's sense of decoration gives me a headache, and not just because it's so corny.





Also, for fun:

Wouldn't "we" be a collective pronoun in this case, therefore making the singular "friend" correct?

A glossy, expensive-looking take-out menu I got in the mail from a restaurant & bar on the Sunset Strip:

Sounds like something you'd ask a two-year-old laughing about his bloody nose.