An old man lies in a hospital bed. His wife sits beside him, cradling his hand. Morphine drips and cables crowd the ward. This could be the couple’s last hour together, prompting the patient to admit, “I wish I’d made less mistakes in my life.” Without pause, his wife says, “Fewer.”

Memes can be mean that way, and accurate to boot. Pedantically, of course, the wife is right. Fewer goes to tally countable things, such as coins or a bloke’s regrets, while less applies to the uncountable stuff, things like money or dignity. But there is a time and place. Unless the couple loves playing Grammar Gotcha, the usage snub could wait.

Since language purity and conversational fluency often lie at odds. Pedantry and palliative care don’t mix. Said another way, which matters more: connection or correction? Forty years ago, flushed with the zeal of an expensive education, I literally would have decimated anyone for misusing literally, or decimate. Yet lately I’ve mellowed on the side of “do tell” rather than telling off.

Unique is one example, a French twist on unicos in Latin, being sole, or single. The platypus is unique to Australia. Fingerprints and snowflakes are unique. As an absolute, the word needs no modifier. Frederic Chopin and Nina Simone were both gifted pianists, none more unique than the other. Your signature isn’t very unique, just unique. However, in recent years, I’ve folded a few degrees, only a few, to honour the storyteller.

Consider the curfew-breaking teen, bound to be so busted once she gets home. Busted is busted, so why the “so”? It adds a little more colour. Just as the raconteur can share details of their totally unique childhood. The solecism will jar the purists, until they twig this isn’t a grammar exam, but storytime. Wiser to hold your tongue and let the yarn unfurl.

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Correct English will always matter, governed by context. I’m not pushing anarchy, but spontaneity instead. Amanda Vanstone, the former Liberal federal minister, bears the burden of being cited by Macquarie’s blog as a literal miscreant. There in print, the one-time radio host is credited as saying: “I can assure you we are literally bending over backwards to take into account the concerns raised by colleagues.”

To be fair, the dictionary labels her usage as non-standard, rather than wrong. Unless the senator moonlighted as a yogi, I doubt her contortions would be literal – that is, actual. Once I’d tutted at Vanstone’s expense, but not now. The quote is a media grab after all, not an essay, the adverb enlisted as oral italics rather than a learning gap.

Last year, for Mental Floss magazine, Anastasia Rose Hyden collated 10 examples of eminent novelists using the non-standard literally, from Austen to Joyce, from Jane Eyre being the literal apple of Rochester’s eye to Tom Sawyer literally rolling in wealth. In David Copperfield, the candles are so dim that “one’s eyes are literally falling out of one’s head”. Meanwhile, Jo and Meg of Little Women, roam a land that “literally flowed with milk and honey”. Unless cows and bees were at full gush, or Uriah Heep had sockets for peepers, I’d say the writers were taking liberties, engrossing a million readers along the way.