- YYYY/MM/DD is the best way to date something due to it keeping chronological order.

The rationale is strong, but ISO 8601 says: YYYY-MM-DD

Choice of separator (/ vs - is not important).



Also, I am a bit of a prescriptivist.
  • You can have a number of lights, and
  • you can have an amount of light,
...but never shall you have a number of light or an amount of lights.

Likewise, you can less water, but only fewer items at the checkout line in the grocery.

"In the grocery" rather than "at the grocery" makes me think you're inside a giant, undefined item of grocery.

Duthomhas wrote:
Choice of separator (/ vs - is not important).

Agreed. '/' wouldn't work for file systems, anyway.

jonnin wrote:
people that come to a complete stop to turn when there is no reason to do so

If you're referring to right turns on red, technically you are supposed to come to a complete stop before making the right turn. Is this strictly enforced? No.

Try and hang yourself ... is just wrong.

A morbid example to choose, but yes I used to be obsessive(?) about this, but then learned to not care and shake it off as idiomatic use.

but only fewer items at the checkout line

You are correct, but I rarely use "fewer". Maybe because I'm used to programming where I read out "<" as "less than", even if I'm dealing with countable quantities.

Personally I never use "grocery" as noun. You're either at the grocery store, or you're buying groceries (as a plural-only noun). In fact without knowing more, I'd say Duthomhas simply made a typo.

Sorry, dialectical Midwest that has somehow slipped into my vocabulary.


Mathematically, 6 _is_ “less than” 7.

But if you have only six pumpkins and Sally next door has seven, then you have fewer pumpkins than she does.

6 < 7 is a mathematical comparison of (measurable) value. Hence, “less” or “lesser” are correct. Comparing countable items (such as pumpkins), however, is done with “fewer”.

Good reading: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/fewer-vs-less

Oh, interesting. I should have at least looked up the Wiktionary definition for it. My mistake.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grocery