Posts Tagged ‘metaphors’
Using “Over” with Numbers is More Than Acceptable
Early in my copywriting career, I got into a heated debate with an editor about using the word over to mean more than.
I had drafted a headline on a flyer saying something along the lines of “over 5,000 whatsits” on a promotion for one of the magazines my company produced. The editor took issue with my copy, saying that it should be “more than 5,000.”
I thought that that was total crap.
Either is fine in most instances, and in the promotional piece I was working on — fewer words worked much better. But the editor was insistent on her point, trying to tell me that it’s not just a matter of style, but that using over is blatantly ungrammatical.
Why is using over before a number ungrammatical?
It’s not. But here’s why some people think it is: Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Nathanael Green
May 21, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Posted in Grammar, Linguistics, Thoughts on Language, Writing Tips
Tagged with Guy Deutscher, language, Linguistics, metaphors, more than vs. over, The Unfolding of Language