“There are less people here today than yesterday.”
It’s fewer, people! Fewer people!*
It’s an easy rule. I think you can handle it, my friends. If you’re talking about a bunch of things (multiple objects), you use fewer, fewest. Example: “I’ll order fewer pancakes next time.” If you say “less pancakes,” sorry, but I may think less of you.
If you’re talking about a single thing that is measurable, you use less, least. Example: “There was less pancake batter than I expected.”
So, you don’t say, “The Cubs scored less runs today.” You don’t say, “Zoe has less pennies in her piggy bank,” even though she has less money because of it.
Don’t be confused by the fact that you use more in both cases for the opposite situation: more batter, more pennies. You lucked out: one word fits all. Be happy about that. But don’t start using a single word in our original situation, when you really should be making a choice between the right one and the wrong one. Maybe if we are not lazy in our word choice, there is a better chance we will not be sloppy in our thinking.
To sum up: if something is countable and you remove some items, you have fewer. If something is measurable and you take away some of it, you have less.
Now go forth and use the damn words properly. It will make Stannis Baratheon happy (or, should we say, less miserable).
__________
*Notice the comma in the first sentence? And the lack of comma in the second? See the difference in what I’m saying? No? Well, that’s another thing that is almost universally absent nowadays: the comma of direct address. I challenge you to find three people who know what that is. You see its absence all the time: “Hi Mom!” Goodbye, sweet comma-modulated clarity, by whose grace we know the difference between “Let’s eat, Mom” and “Let’s eat Mom.”
Addendum 2018.05.14: Oh-boy-oh-boy, it’s a running joke! (Yes, yes, I’m still catching up …)
Addendum 2018.05.23: The torch has been passed!
A similarly misused word: amount, as in, “The amount of people who say something like this is astounding.”
Is this something new, or has it been going on for years without my noticing?
An interesting exception (or pseudo-exception): “When I bike to work, there is one less car on the road.” Perfectly acceptable! And not just because “one fewer car on the road” sounds absolutely illiterate. My guess is that “one less car” is actually a more modern-sounding reshuffling of “one car less,” i.e., the total number of cars is reduced by one. (“One car less” sounds old fashioned to me, at least.)
Aside to commenter NW: you may need to make explicit that you want people to say “the number of people …” If that’s what you want—i.e., if your dictionary still has a prescriptive role in addition to being descriptive. It seems dictionaries nowadays lean more heavily toward the latter (“English is a living language,” “Linguistic change bubbles up from below,” etc.), which may lead to the complete erasure of many interesting and useful subtleties among words that hover and flutter around a common topic (in this case, quantity).
Replying to Funk replying to Noah: It is possible, though not probable, and still probably unacceptable, that people (the multiheaded, terrifying conglomeration of human beings) actually mean “the amount of people,” as in “sixty-seven thousand tons of humanity actually support the estimated 269 pounds of Donald J. Trump.”
And replying to Funk only: “one car less” doesn’t sound old fashioned to me.