Tesco Language

Tesco is to change the wording of signs on its fast-track checkouts to avoid any linguistic dispute.

The supermarket giant is to replace its current “10 items or less” notices with signs saying “Up to 10 items”.

Tesco’s move follows uncertainty over whether the current notices should use “fewer” instead of “less”.

(source)

Whilst ‘10 items or fewer’ is more linguistically correct than ‘10 items or less’, ‘up to 10 items’ does not just ‘clarify’ the meaning (who was unclear?) it actually changes the meaning.

‘10 items or fewer/less’ implies the number of items can be 10. ‘Up to 10 items’ implies that anything from 1 to 9 is okay, but 10 is too many.

With the change, it’s possible that jobsworths on the till might have a resurgence. I hope not! I haven’t had one of those in some time.

All this is just fussing round the edges – appealing to the grammar pedants. I’d much prefer it if Tesco could sort out its pricing policy, that’d be a useful change.