handful vs a few

Impossible to say really, sorry. These things don't have set limits. It depends on the context and which word fits best, or which word you prefer to use. Handful is probably less formal.

Could you try to answer the original questions based on the following example?

Only a handful/a few survivors survived the deadly quake.

Ony a handful/a few people attended the meeting.

My gut feeling is that a handful of people is less than a few people in these contexts, but there is no real reason to believe that. Another person would feel differently. Honestly, you can't really say. They are both very vague terms in most contexts.

The only situation where I can see a clear distinction is where we are talking of 'relatively' few. If I invited 500,000 people to somet

A handful of survivors / people or a handful survivors / people

New2Grammar, have not you omitted "of" after handful?