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Message: [QUOTE="Michael Wojcik, post: 4222524"] There's definitely a distinction between those two concepts. It's just not definitively captured by the use of "less" in that sentence, which could be interpreted as either without straining normal meanings of the words involved. However, convention suggests that "the less" in that sentence is the adverbial "the less", and not part of a noun phrase "the less people" meaning not as many people. This is one place where, for clarity, it would be useful to use "fewer" *if* that was what the author wanted to convey. (In this case it wasn't.) As Arved said elsethread, however, you'd have to do some editing to arrive at a palatable construction using "fewer". One option would be "the higher you went ... the fewer the people who were able ...". [/QUOTE]