A few days ago an irate reader vented his spleen online over someone who used further to mean at a greater distance.
For the civilians in the room, this will require a little explanation.
Further, meaning "at or to a greater distance," has been in English since the Plantagenets. It has a number of additional meanings, such as "to or at a more advanced point" and "to a greater degree or extent." English being a casual and generous sort of language, after a couple of centuries, further gave rise to the related farther: "to a greater distance in space." Or also: "at a greater distance in space or at a more remote place," "to or at a more advanced point or beyond a given limit," "to a greater degree or extent."
So there's overlap, because further and farther can mean and have meant pretty much the same thing, including "to a greater distance." The British, sometimes a little casual with the language they invented, often use the two interchangeably in this sense..
But over the years a differentiation has developed, particularly among those devoted to what Bryan Garner calls "more punctilious usage." That is, farther is reserved to indication physical distance, while further retains a figurative sense, i.e., "more of." The pattern of general usage is that many people use further for both physical and figurative senses, while farther tends not to be used in the figurative sense.
That farther/further distinction about physical distance has been enshrined in the Associated Press Stylebook and is widely observed by people who pay attention to the Associated Press Stylebook.
I changed a further to a farther in a story yesterday because I have been following that distinction for years. Should I have?
I hear the muttering in the back row, but give me a moment.
Had I not made that change yesterday, no reader of the story would have failed to understand that further meant "to a greater distance." Was this the best use of my time? Is it possible that in making this trivial edit I might have overlooked a serious deficiency in the text? (Editors worry about that.) In editing we strive for precision in language, for maintaining crucial distinctions in meaning. And given the volume of prose washing over us, and the limited time and attention we are able to pay to it, as punctilious as we want to me, we have to examine whether the distinctions we have been observing are truly meaningful, worth our time.
That person who took the trouble to go online to belabor the writer and publication that allowed a further for a farther seems to think that the distinction is a hill to die on.
I don't see it as a hill. Or a hillock, or a rise, or, for that matter, a speed bump.