I have a very busy week ahead of me, so I’ll make this lesson a quick one.
One of the most commonly occurring errors I see in writing and hear in conversation is using over when more than is accurate.
The AP Stylebook states that over “generally refers to spatial relationships,” and more than “is preferred with numerals.”
For example: The plane flew over the city. Their salaries went up more than $20 a week.
July 28, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Unfortunately, the AP Stylebook is wrong on this one. “over” has been used to mean “more than” since Old English, according the Oxford English Dictionary. This notion that “over” can’t mean “more than” was apparently the brainchild of an overzealous editor in 1877 and has been carried over in a lot of stylebooks despite its lack of evidence. I wrote something up about this misconception a while back (http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/over-more-than/), but I didn’t realize at the time that even the AP believes it.
March 2, 2009 at 8:53 pm
[...] 07/28/08: As pointed out on Laurie Blandford’s blog, it turns out that the AP Stylebook also repeats this “over is for spatial relationships” claim. [...]