Customers should be counted, too!

I said yesterday that AMOUNT and NUMBER continue to be a problem. That remains true today. There is a good letter to the editor in The Birmingham News this morning about the cappuccino flap. Personally, I like frothy milk in my decaf skimmed milk cappuccino. At least I can pretend I'm sipping that great liquid through whipped cream!

Celia Mayhew, who works at Starbucks, defended the cappuccino, but in doing so, she made this statement:

I work at Starbucks, and there is no way to comprehend the insane amount of customers that complain about the frothy milk within a cappuccino.

Insane or not, those customers can be counted. They are not sugar or salt or laundry, as I pointed out yesterday. Therefore, the sentence should read as follows:

I work at Starbucks, and there is no way to comprehend the insane number of customers who complain about frothy milk within a cappuccino.

BONUS COMMENT: Notice that I also changed the word THAT to WHO in this sentence. This is not an absolute rule, but it is a good "rule of thumb." Whenever you refer to people (or a person), use WHO instead of THAT.

People Count! And They Should Be Counted!

I have pointed this out before, but it continues to be a problem. Things that can be counted (bridges, marmosets, peanuts, people) are described in one way, and things that occur in a lump sum (sand, money, glue, laundry) are described in a different way.

The TimesDaily in Florence, Alabama TimesDaily.com recently reported about how successful the North Alabama Birding Trail http://northalabamabirdingtrail.com is. It opened in September 2005, and the visitor response has exceeded expectations. That is the good news.

The bad news, at least from my GrammarGlitchCentral perspective, is that one of the statements in the article has the word AMOUNT where it should be NUMBER:

We have a tremendous amount of people coming by or contacting our office for information on the birding trail.

Whoops! You can talk about AMOUNTS of sand, money, glue, laundry, or rain. However, when you talk about people (or birds or visitors or trails) or anything else that can be counted individually (grains of sand, dollar bills, nickels, jars of glue, towels and sheets, or raindrops), the correct word is NUMBER. This sentence should read as follows:

We have a tremendous number of people coming by or contacting our office for information on the birding trail.

Happy Trails, everyone!

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!

AMOUNT is a lump sum noun (SINGULAR).

Are you tired of hearing me point out examples of errors in subject/verb agreement? I just can't give up on getting this one right. Here is a sentence from this morning's The Birmingham News:

He wrote that in the last four years alone, the total amount of fees and costs accumulated were more than $10 million.

Erin Stock was not quoting the federal judge who was referring to yet another potential financial disaster for Jefferson County. The statement was PARAPHRASED, so the reporter could have corrected any incorrect usage by the judge.

AMOUNT is a LUMP SUM NOUN (like laundry, sand, salt, money). It refers to a "lump" of something that is treated as ONE THING. Therefore, the verb should be singular. The sentence should read as follows:

He wrote that, in the last four years alone, the total amount of fees and costs accumulated was more than $10 million.

If you are an observant blog reader, you might also notice that I added a comma between "that" and "in." For me, this clearly sets off the inserted phrase "in the last four years alone." However, journalists are often expected to be skimpy with punctuation to save space, so I won't take points off for that.

If you are writing business prose, it would be wise to add the comma.