doc: change "less" to "fewer" in CONTRIBUTING.md

[b0yfriend]

Consider the phrase "50 characters or less".
The use of "less" in that phrase is grammatically incorrect.

"Less" and "fewer" are both quantifiers with similar functions.

However, "less" suits mass nouns ("less water", "less salt").
"Fewer" suits countable nouns ("fewer chairs", "fewer doors").

"Character" is a countable noun. Therefore, "fewer" is the appropriate quantifier for it.

I apologize for the pedantry, but it was bothering me 😅 .

Checklist

• make -j4 test (UNIX), or vcbuild test (Windows) passes
• documentation is changed or added
• commit message follows commit guidelines

Affected core subsystem(s)

doc

[addaleax]

Maybe my sense as a non-native speaker is off, but with fewer, re-ordering to 50 or fewer characters sounds more natural to me? 😄

[b0yfriend]

It feels more correct to me, too!

I live in the US. Interchanging fewer and less is common here, even when it's technically incorrect. It doesn't bother me much, actually. The distinction is pedantic.

However, I figured that I should fix it anyway. It would bother someone else eventually, I think. 🤷

[Trott]

less is correct here. fewer is an unidiomatic hypercorrection. More in a bit...

[Trott]

My Google Books linking ability is not the greatest but this should get you to the right page.

Scroll up to the top of the "fewer, less" section (at the top of page 265) and read the whole section.

Or I can just type it in here:

As a general guide, fewer is used with plural nouns (fewer books, fewer people) and indicates number, whereas less is used with singular nouns and indicates amount (less money / less happiness). However, there is an extensive no man's land between these two positions. To begin with, less can be used idiomatically with than followed by plural nouns when these denote something closer to an amount than a numerical quantity, as with distances, periods of time, ages, and sums of money: less than 5 miles to go / less than six weeks / children less than three years old / less than £100.

Supermarket checkouts are correct when the signs they display read 5 items or less (which refers to a total amount) and are misguidedly pedantic when they read 5 items or fewer (which emphasizes individuality, surely not the intention).

Examiners often invite candidates to write a summary of a passage of prose in fifty words or less.

This is Fowler's Modern English Usage Second Edition from 2008 but other usage guides will tell you basically the same thing.

The last example (fifty words or less) is closest to what we have here.

[Trott]

OK, so now that I'm done typing all that stuff, I should add the things I probably should have said first which would be:

Thanks for the pull request! It's great that you want to improve the docs!

If you enjoy doc editing/writing, I have a list of things I've been meaning to get to some day but never seem to get around to. Hit me up. :-D

[b0yfriend]

I concede to your judgement. 🙏

I do enjoy doc-writing! It’s not a glamorous job in open-source. However, documentation can make/break an open-source project. Poorly written docs frustrate me. Well written docs are joyful surprises. Thus, I think doc-writing is worthwhile.

Please, let me know how I can help!

[Trott]

Please, let me know how I can help!

Since you were looking at CONTRIBUTING.md…

A problem with our CONTRIBUTING.md is that it is very long and is often needlessly wordy. Most people who are reading the doc are probably clicking through to it from the interface where they are opening a pull request or an issue. In other words, they are just about to do something. This is a terrible time to put a super long document in front of them. Ideally, it would be a short document with just what people need.

Unfortunately, that can be in tension with other purposes/uses of CONTRIBUTING.md such as to advertise our values and be welcoming. So, removing content might hit objections.

I had intended to go through and make it more concise in a piecemeal fashion without eliminating content. see 90abfd6 for example. But then…

I went to open a pull request in ESLint and came across this magnificent example of a CONTRIBUTING.md: https://github.com/eslint/eslint/blob/eb4b1e03f82e3e76db65de07b07d2f94d0a8b25e/CONTRIBUTING.md

Nice and short, but links out to the things you need to know. If you're opening a bug report it doesn't put hundreds of words about change requests in front of you. That sort of thing.

So, if you (or someone else) wants to try to re-organize our CONTRIBUTING.md to be more like that one, I'd be 👍. Necessary caveat: There are 106 other Collaborators on Node.js and they are likely to have opinions too and their opinions may contradict mine or each others. Doc changes are hard enough as is, but do be prepared for the too-many-cooks problem. Don't get discouraged!

[Trott]

I opened a separate issue about it and tagged it help wanted. Feel free to go over there and say you're doing this if you in fact are doing it. :-D #17842

[b0yfriend]

Perfect. Thanks for the guidance!