10

The following sentence isn't grammatically correct and I don't know why ?

We should spend more money on education and health and fewer on new technology.

Could anyone help ?

Improve this question
0

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
30

"Money" is uncountable, so the correct sentence is:

"We should spend more money on education and health and less on new technology."

Improve this answer
1
  • 3
    Uncountable - also known as a "mass noun."
    – Travis
    Commented Sep 29, 2014 at 18:35
7

Conversely, the same idea can be expressed as

We should spend more dollars on education and fewer on new technology.

More is acceptable for both countable and not countable.

More beans and more water.

But

Fewer beans and less water

Improve this answer
4
  • 2
    But note that "more dollars on education and fewer on new technology" is something of a special case because you're effectively talking about the dollars individually. Conversely to your converse, "We should spend a million dollars on education and less on new technology."
    – David Richerby
    Commented Sep 29, 2014 at 17:10
  • 2
    You're making the mistake of thinking that because mass nouns can only take 'less', that countable nouns shouldn't take 'less'. 'Less' is like 'more': it's allowed for both mass and countable, but 'fewer' is only allowed for countables.
    – curiousdannii
    Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 4:24
  • @curiousdannii though there are plenty of teachers and would-be pedants that make that mistake too, so it's a "zombie rule". While you are 100% correct, it can be worth knowing that some object to less for countables, if only so that one knows not to worry about them.
    – Jon Hanna
    Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 12:27
  • -1. The first sentence sounds like you're going to spend about 6 fewer dollars on technology, all of them one dollar bills.
    – djechlin
    Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 16:25
1

We say less money not fewer money because it is a mass noun (uncountable). The noun money can also be omitted when it is inferred by the verb spend.

  1. I should spend LESS [money] on eating out and MORE on books.

But units of money such as euros, dollars, coins, cents, etc. are countable, and it is considered grammatically more acceptable to use few/fewer. The unit of money cannot be omitted in this case

  1. I should spend FEWER DOLLARS on eating out and more on books.

Uncountable nouns

In English grammar, some things are seen as a whole or mass. These are called uncountable nouns, because they cannot be separated or counted.

Other common uncountable nouns include:
accommodation, baggage, homework, knowledge, money, permission, research, traffic, travel.
Cambridge Dictionaries

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.