Brow Beat

Copy-Editing the Super Bowl Commercials: “Less Sugar, Less Bottles”?

In her Super Bowl ad for SodaStream, Scarlett Johansson promises a “soda that’s better for you and all of us. Less sugar, less bottles.” 

Less bottles? 

Grammar Girl notes that you should use less with “mass nouns” and fewer with “count nouns.” A mass noun, she continues, is something “you can’t count individually,” like sugar. A count noun is, well, “something you can count,” like bottles.

Less sugar. Fewer bottles. It’s time to re-cut that ad, SodaStream.