Word Nerds Unite

Apologies. As soon as I let go of my Monday posting schedule, I seemed to lose track of the concept of “weekly” altogther. But, it’s a three-day weekend, and I’m feeling my time to be a little more ample than usual. 

I see there were some hearty comments posted about my last entry. What I found most interesting about this thread is that one commenter pointed out a string of blog posts on the over/more than debate, one of which was posted on the very same day I posted mine! (Check out the Common Sense PR blog for April 30.) Crazy! Now, I know I didn’t look at that blog before I wrote my entry, and while I can’t say the same for Common Sense I’d like to believe that there was just something in the air that day that made all the world’s grammar snobs hone in on the all-too-prevalent misuse of the word over.

Like Common Sense, I believe that more than is clearly more precise than over, and if you can be more precise, why would you choose not to be? Imprecision is the cornerstone of miscommunication, and in my opinion it is just good practice to choose the best word available every single time.