Posh grammar

I have been tying myself in grammatical knots over the differences between “over’ and “more than”. It all started when I did some recording with a rather posh Englishwoman. She is a trained journalist and she objected to the sentence “it cost over two thousand pounds.” She said “over” must not be used with countable nouns and the correct sentence should be “it cost more than two thousand pounds.” Strictly speaking she may be right and I wrote a grammar quiz on the subject for the quiz section, but it is rather a grey area. It seems to me, schools of journalism make rather a big deal over what is, in fact, a very common error. Many people wouldn’t object to the sentence.

“There were over 2,000 people at the concert”

In fact I have it, as an example, in a highly respected grammar book in front of me, but my journalistic friend will have none of it. For her “over” should only be used for things which are physically higher.

“The bird flew over the mountain”

However she is not absolutely consistent in her argument and with ages and speeds she is less dogmatic. In fact she might agree

“She is over thirty” sounds better than “She is more than thirty.” Likewise she has no problem with:

“He was driving over 100 mph.”

All in all there seem to be several opinions about whether “more than” and “over” are interchangeable. As far as Johnny Grammar is concerned and, as long as you don’t work for a newspaper, I wouldn’t worry too much about using “over” in front of numbers. Still you will notice in the quiz I have given “more than’ as the correct answer to number one. I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of the press!

I said she was rather a posh woman and maybe David Beckham’s wife Victoria Beckham, the Posh Spice of the British pop group, the Spice Girls, springs to the minds of some readers. Posh means elegant, stylish and luxurious. It also means somebody who seems very upper class. I heard a story about the origins of the word posh which claimed it came from the term “starboard out port home.” Starboard and port are nautical terms for right and left and wealthy people travelling to India by ship in the 19th century would prefer cabins sheltered from the sun. These would be on the right (starboard) side of the ship on the way out and the left (port) side on the way back. However it turns out there is no hard evidence for this and it is probably just another story.

(Source: www.englishonline.org.cn)

Johnny Grammar is English Online's resident grammar teacher. Johnny loves to tackle your worst grammar nightmares and provide you with simple explanations.

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