With a salary of less than $15,000 dollars a year and fewer sources of

FEW is used with words denoting people or countable things (e.g fewer members; fewer books)
LESS is used with mass nouns, denoting things which cannot be counted (e.g. less money; less bother)

(A) of less than $15,000 dollars a year and fewer - CORRECT
(B) lower than $15,000 dollars and less - INCORRECT - Question is not talking about scale of salary which is higher or lower than a standard, but it talks about absolute amount of salary which is less than (or more than) a certain amount.
(C) lesser than $15,000 dollars and fewer - INCORRECT - Lesser is a comparative forms of little
(D) fewer than $15,000 dollars and less - INCORRECT
(E) of fewer than $15,000 dollars and of fewer - INCORRECT - Check the usage of OF in second part

With a salary of less than $15,000 dollars a year and fewer sources of alternate income than before, Mrs. Greenman is in financial difficulty.
5 seconds Scan : less vs few
salary uncountable so less and sources countable so fewer
(A) of less than $15,000 dollars a year and fewer
(B) lower than $15,000 dollars and less
(C) lesser than $15,000 dollars and fewer
(D) fewer than $15,000 dollars and less
(E) of fewer than $15,000 dollars and of fewer

also to decide between A vs C go with A as c omits the a year term and therefore change in meaning

In my opinion, a big clue to the answer is $15,000 a year. No other option mentions it. For all other options, this $15,000 could have been monthly salary which when combined is a significant amount. That is what I used to answer this question.

A should be the answer
"sources" is countable so B and D is eliminated.
"Dollars" is uncountable so E eliminated.
"Lesser" is not correct. C eliminated.

We use fewer for countable ,here dollars are countable so why E is incorrect.

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can you please explain why 15,000 dollors is not countable ? Also please explain if it is correct to use POE and eliminate options without " dollars in year" pharse?

Dollars is not countable because it goes back to the unit noun money.

It is a unit noun a dollar is money

You don’t say 15,000 money right?

Posted from my mobile device

The countable / uncountable "can you count it?" thing is a helpful tool, but it's not as hard-and-fast a rule. What countable/uncountable really does is tell the reader how to treat the quantity/amount.

Here $15,000 is a threshold. If a university were to say "tuition is free for students whose families earn less than $60,000" you're not meant to count the individual dollars...you could, but the policy is setting up a threshold: here's the line, and if you're below it this policy applies. So saying "less" uses the uncountable/countable underlying logic to tell you how to treat it...it's not about counting the individual bills, it's about treating that one amount of money as a threshold.

But in some cases you're meant to treat the dollars as individual bills, and "fewer" would help signal that. For example "children earned a dollar bill for each puzzle they solved, and in the end Charlie had received fewer dollars than anyone else." Here we do want to treat the dollars as individuals because they themselves are the prizes...it's less about the sum of money and more about the puzzles-solved that they represent, and you definitely want those to be individuals.

So I guess I'd say the rule isn't really "can you count it or not" so much as "are you talking about the individual items (countable) or about the quantity as a whole (uncountable)?

[quote="VeritasPrepBrian"]The countable / uncountable "can you count it?" thing is a helpful tool, but it's not as hard-and-fast a rule. What countable/uncountable really does is tell the reader how to treat the quantity/amount.

VeritasPrepBrian= GMAT God


Here is my take at it.

sources of alternate income ==can you count it(just learned from Brian) ..yes ..so fewer will come here .
This quickly eliminates B and D.

Now we need to select between choice between lesser than and less than.

Note :Option C is tricky..lesser than ...vs fewer (its temping to make it parallel..adjective..adjective)
but its of course fatal

"LESS vs Lesser than usage"

Less is the comparative form of little and is normally used only with uncountable nouns*:
I have $20.00. Jack has $30.00. I have less money than Jack.
Lesser is an comparative adjective used only before a noun.
It means ""not as large,"" ""not as important,"" or ""not as much"" as something else:
The current global food crisis is creating hardships for people everywhere, but people
in developed countries are suffering to a lesser degree than people in the underdeveloped parts of the world
""Lesser"" refers to the diminished importance of something, NOT to the amount of something.(genneraly before noun)...They originally asked for $5 million, but finally settled for a lesser sum
"

So this means we cannot use lesser than for the amount of something .This means E is out.

Now we are left with option A and E.

Amount fewer than 15000 means ur counting the units of dollar..But it actually can be in decimal or cents ..

Finally we are left with only option A.


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