[Doctor 2Brains]

Sorry, peeps: when I pasted it, I though I had paragraph breaks. Can the mods fix it?

[a fool in paradise]

After reading that I need a drink! (preferably of home brew)

[kosciusko51]

Not if you think of it this way:

LESS: subtraction, x-y
MORE: addition, x+y
TIMES or TIMES MORE: multiplication, x*y
TIMES LESS: division, x/y

[NativeSon]

“x times less” irritates me. I’ve never converted it into formula but it always sounds confusing to me and does not create a clear image.

[Rio]

I agree. You can drink ten times more beer (I’ll try to confirm this), but cannot drink ten times less.

[katana]

The prof is clearly right. But like “I could care less” instead of “I could not care less” it’s a lazy illogicality that we let slip by. In the case of “X times as many” used in a negative sense it definitively classifies the writer as a journalism school graduate.

[IYAS9YAS]

An English professor should know that less is improper when there are things than can be counted. Less is used for the abstract. There are three fewer cars, not less. Less traffic, less congestion, but fewer cars.

[arthurus]

That phrase “X times less” always stops me. It is absurd and means nothing real. Oen can infer that the writer or speaker means that that there is less of something but “ten times less?” What is that? Parsing might indicate that the result of something ten times less than 100 would be -900 which doesn’t make any sense at all in any situation where that ignorant phrase is used.

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

And your pernt would be? ;-)

[ShadowAce]

“Less” means subtract. “There were ten, now there are three less.” 10-3. Duh.

Incorrect. The correct answer is "There were ten. Now there are three fewer."

[Eagle Bomba]

If I drink 9 times less, how much beer can I have?

[muir_redwoods]

In most cases of the above “Less” should be “Fewer”

[IronJack]

“X times less (or fewer)” isn’t as clear as “one xth as much (or many).” But it is still a perfectly valid, if cumbersome, grammatical construction. Think of it as “more” of a “negative.” “Colder” is less heat, not more coldness. But we talk about cold As if it were a presence of something instead of its opposite’s absence. You can talk about poverty as the absence of money or the presence of penury. So a poor person could be deemed to have 10 times less money (or 10 times as much penury) as a wealthier person.

But in the strict mathematical sense, you are right. “Ten times less” is not the same as “one tenth of.” Let’s say the statement is “100 is 10 times less than 1000.” Ten times 1000 is 10000. 100 is not 1000 - 10000, so the statement is wrong. Maybe you meant 10 times 1000. But then you’re claiming that 100 = 1000 - 1000, which is still wrong.

On the other hand, to say “100 is one tenth of 1000” is clearly demonstrable. 1000 x 0.1 = 100.

The bottom line is, no editor worth his red pen would let a phrase like “ten times less” stand. And no writer worth his Underwood would use it in the first place.

[Undecided 2012]

x = y/10

[jiggyboy]

This is one of my big pet peeves as well. “It takes 10 times less energy than before.” “Ok, before it took one kilowatt, now, it’s ten times one kilowatt?” “Uh no, ...”