Grammatical Error in Blunderville Registration Message

[LoryneHavi]

When participating in a Blunderville show that has not reached the full 24 participants, the following message displays: "Less than 24 competitors have registered. MGF rewards will be adjusted accordingly."

However, it should be "Fewer than 24 competitors have registered...", as competitors are countable, rather than measurable.

[Rongway]

The text is fine as is.

Requiring "fewer" vs "less" is prescriptive grammar rather than descriptive grammar. There is nothing grammatically wrong with the use of "less" to refer to countably deficient items.

Merriam-Webster: Fewer definition

The traditional view is that less applies to matters of degree, value, or amount and modifies collective nouns, mass nouns, or nouns denoting an abstract whole while fewer applies to matters of number and modifies plural nouns. Less has been used to modify plural nouns since the days of King Alfred [Rongway note: late 9th century] and the usage, though roundly decried, appears to be increasing. Less is more likely than fewer to modify plural nouns when distances, sums of money, and a few fixed phrases are involved

less than 100 miles

an investment of less than $2000

in 25 words or less

and as likely as fewer to modify periods of time.

in less (or fewer) than four hours

It's fine to apply prescriptive grammar where the application is character- or setting-sensitive (e.g., when writing dialog for Urianger). It's not necessary to apply prescriptive grammar in a system interface.

[Iscah]

Merriam-Webster: Fewer definition

Most of those examples seem like edge cases where the unit can be divided, in which case my understanding is that "less" is correct even if strictly following the "less vs fewer" rule.

"One fewer" than four hours is... three hours? 3:59 hours? The concept of "fewer" doesn't really make sense here. Time is continuous, not discrete.

If this was on a grammar test, I would think "words" is the only unit in those examples that would need to use fewer rather than less.

That said, I am happy with the drift away from the pedantic differentiation when the one word works well for both circumstances and nobody will doubt the meaning.