Originally Posted by
Seattle Forrest
Somebody from the UK is going to get on your case about less vs fewer because gear is a count noun.
(They'll be wrong, too.)
Originally Posted by
Doohickie
Not LESS. FEWER. Less refers to collective nouns such as sand. Fewer is preferred for plural nouns, such as, well, gears.
/pedant
Originally Posted by
twodownzero
Not from the UK, but it is fewer not less, and no, I'm not wrong.
Did I call that or what? Yeah, I got the geography wrong, though.
Less vs fewer for count nouns is a stylistic choice, not any kind of rule of grammar. You're both expressing your own preference, and not anything beyond that.