It really irks me when people use the words amount and number in the wrong context. What just fired me off this time was reading this Macworld article about iPhone orders reaching 13,000 per second. (Anyway, that sounds way too high, surely 13,000 per minute is more realistic.)
But I digress. What got me was the quote from O2 "The amount of devices will vary depending on the store...". This should of course be "The number of devices...".
Amount should be used when you are referring to a portion of a single thing. If you can't pluralise the thing, then you should always use amount.
Number should be used to signify plurality. If it makes sense that you can count the number of objects, then use number.
Some examples might help...
- Correct: I want to buy an amount of sand.
- Incorrect: I want to buy a number of sand.
However, what would be correct grammar (though hardly appropriate in the real world) is "I want to buy a number of sand particles". Thus, an amount of sand particles is incorrect.
And consider the following:
- Incorrect: I want to record the amount of messages being sent.
- Correct: I want to record the number of messages being sent.
Thank you for listening. Rant over.
I have checked, but no doubt somebody will flame me for grammatical errors in this post!
