This is part of the difference between series.
Last month, Unifor, a union in Canada, held an online writing workshop for their research and communications team. Related to this was the following tweet they sent out.
Here’s the thing though: using over instead of more than isn’t a writing mistake.
I quote tweeted their tweet saying as much:
You can read more about the AP change here.
It’s not just AP though.
Merriam Webster wrote about the topic a few years ago, showing that we have being using over instead of more than for literally centuries.
Chicago Manual of Style has said since 2010 that the two were interchangeable. Several dictionaries also treat them as interchangeable.
And when I pointed it out, Unifor’s director of communications pushed back:
She said something similar to someone else who called them on their myth perpetuation.
The problem is that the Canadian Press doesn’t actually prefer more than. In its entry for over, it has the following:
In the sense of in excess of, used interchangeably with more than: Creasey and Simenon have each published over (more than) 500 books.
So, in summary, the so-called rule that you must use more than to refer to something countable is nothing more than a myth, one that is still pushed by journalist professors around the English-speaking world, unfortunately.
