FEWER! 10 Items or FEWER!!!!
Come on! Don't TV writers go to college and learn grammer?
shareBecause this is a common error in real life
shareI want to add this post that I included over at the message board for the upcoming (and presumably unrelated) movie with the same title:
-----Text of post to other board--------------------
I would further add that the adjective "less" in the title "10 Items or Less" modifies the entire collective noun phrase rather than just the plural noun "items." While it is true that "items" is a count noun and would merit the adjective "fewer" on its own, the modification of a collective noun may be done using a noncount adjective, as one would do in the following: "playing with less than a full deck." If the title were phrased as follows: "10 or Less Items," then this would be grammatically incorrect, as the noncount adjective "less" would be directly modifying the count noun "items." It would need to be rephrased as "10 or Fewer Items" to fit with conventions of American English. I would argue, though, that "10 Items or Less" does not need correction to fit with conventions. One might reconsider this construction by thinking of it as expressing the idea, "10 items or something less" and thus calling to mind a generally smaller lump of merchandise, a lump conceived of as a unit and thus modifiable by noncount adjectives. The proposed revision to "10 Items or Fewer" simply changes the meaning just slightly to denote that the lane is intended for customers with 10 items, 9 items, 8 items, and so on down to one item, with the item count being emphasized. One might argue that this item count is fundamental to the meaning that grocers wish to express, but then one would be guilty to some extent of intentional fallacy, and grammar corrections must seek only to confine language to conventional usage, but not to tell writers/communicators what they want to express. This material will all be covered on the final exam.
-an English professor from Rhode Island