A number of football commentators use "amount" for all counting.

As I listened to the commentary with several college and pro football games this past weekend, I heard the same grammar glitch numerous times. As I've said before, grammar glitches like this one may be fairly common when people are speaking, but if they carry over to written work, they stand out as poor usage and should be corrected.



I've blogged about this before, but please remember that AMOUNT is used for "lump sum" things like money, laundry, salt, energy, team spirit, and jewelry. NUMBER is used for things that can be counted (penalities, points, jerseys, and jewels).



Here are two sentences I heard over the weekend:



Georgia has had a ridiculous amount of penalities this year.



For a pro team, they have scored a minute amount of points so far.



Both PENALITIES and POINTS can be counted, so they should be described with the word NUMBER rather than the word AMOUNT. These sentences should read as follows:



Georgia has had a ridiculous number of penalities this year.



For a pro team, they have scored a minute number of points so far.



I hope your team has scored a large number of points so far this year (unless you happen to be a rival of Ohio State) and that the amount of your enthusiasm remains high throughout the season!