[♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Grandma Girl here, I'm Mignon Focardy, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

Writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, I have a meeting middle about writing about quantities,

and a listener question about a phrase that we're hoping you've heard, maybe you can help.

[♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Many writers and speakers toss quantities around with great imprecision.

How many, though, is many authors and speakers.

How great is great imprecision.

In casual conversation, we might toss around quantities with reckless abandon.

Our intent might be to emphasize or de-emphasize a preponderance of something.

Consider the word majority.

In an election, a true majority means one vote or more over 50% of the voters.

That's different from a plurality, the highest total or percentage in a contest of three or more candidates.

For example, if candidate A got 13% of the votes, candidate B got 47%,

and candidate C got 40%, candidate B wins with a plurality of 47%.

And if you're really good at doing math in your head and you're wondering why those numbers don't add up to 100%,

Mickey Mouse got some right-in votes. He always does.

Moving on, most of the time you can write or say most, rather than the majority of.

It's quicker and clearer. When precision counts as in the election we just mentioned,

it's best to make it clear whether you mean majority or plurality.

Often, and again how often is often, we talk about small numbers of people or things.

...