The New Yorker magazine quoted anthropologist Helen Fisher as saying that female chimpanzees "are twenty times less likely to bicker over rank."

Leaving aside the intriguing question of how an anthropologist can determine the likelihood that chimps will bicker over anything, we must question how one can use times (which denotes multiplication) and come up with something less.

Excerpted from Richard Lederer's Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay — Practical Advice for the Grammatically Challenged (St. Martin's Griffin). His latest work, A Treasury for Teachers (Howard Books), will be published July 2010. You can e-mail the author at richard.lederer@pobox.com and explore his Web site at www.verbivore.com.