- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
The only numbers I will ever spell are one and zero, and only when using them as a pronoun, or for emphasis, respectively.
Is there ever a reason to not to use symbols when dealing with numbers? Why would “fourteen whatevers” ever be preferable to “14 whatevers”. It’s just so much easier to read numbers as symbols, not spelled out.
(Caveat, not including multipliers, like “273 billion”).
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(Caveat, not including multipliers, like “273 billion”).
Billion is ambiguous, better use powers of 10, e.g. 273e9 or 273e12, depending on which one you mean
Or use SI units.
Even better haha, this is also my preference, but I think most audiences wouldn’t like that, I assume.
Edit: 239,000,000,000 is obviously an option. But I rarely see that in a newspaper.
This audience (me) doesn’t like your use of comma as thousands separator ;)
I’m not a fan of how this isn’t standardised across the world either.
It obviously isn’t a big deal, but he’s my counter argument for fun.
Commas are the more logical option as they already serve as breaks within a sentence.
It’s fairly common across many languages for punctuation to use commas for short breaks within a sentence, and periods/full stops to be used to finish a sentence. It’s so common because even languages that didn’t use these symbols becore, have now adopted it (Chinese comes to mind).
Commas as a separator within the same number fit better into this existing structure, in my opinion.
Dots being used for decimals seems more consistent with this system also, since the difference between units and negative powers feels greater than just seperating digits into groups.
Further (without having actually looked at statistics on this, I could be wrong about this) it’s only Europe who use dots to separate groupings of digits, and commas for decimals.
If this is in fact the case, you (assuming you’re European) ought to switch to the majority’s system so we can have consistency.
Fair is fair ;)
Edit to add: I’m Australian
I like that you take this up just for fun 🙂
And you provide valid arguments. As I was reading your response, I was thinking of how there can be multiple commas in a sentence but only one period. That fits your style.
Yes I am in Europe and it’s not even standard here, for instance the Swiss use ’ as a thousands separator and I don’t know what they do for decimals.
“My” European style is also used in Japan, and they use the metric system, but US voltage and plugs.
We live in a messy world 🙂
Swiss use ’ as a thousands separator
TIL
Appreciate your response friend. I look forward to a day where we standardise this, but we probably never will (and that’s probably fine haha)
As cursed number formats go, India is the worst that comes to my mind:
- European languages: 123,456,789 (groups of 103)
- East Asia: 1,2345,6789 (groups of 104)
Logical smooth sailing.
- India: 12,34,56,789
0_0 Why must you do this to me?
The real style guide is always your reader. If specific numbers may be searched for or copied, it is kinder to use symbols. If your reader is merely reading a number in conversation, it would usually be better to follow the usual style guide.
The more you know and care for your reader, the better your writing will be.
Me writing zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero eight five six two one three four nine two to improve the readability of the document by writing numbers less then ten as words.
Hi, I have no idea how I managed this, but I just saw your comments were “removed by moderator” (which is me)
Sorry about this!
I’m gonna double check this hasn’t been done across the board, perhaps there was some glitch
Edit: I think this may have been an admin deleting all you comments, and my client (voyager) doesn’t differentiate.
19 80 four?
0x7C0
I love the fact this proves the point, that even for emphasis (which I think the title of 1984 is fine to use), it’s LESS clear to spell it out.
I am very thankful my company lets me write numbers and not spell it out.
Remove ambiguity at all costs!
But if they insist I write things out:
Ten-one Ten-two Ten-three Ten-four
I don’t think it is clear as 11, 12, 13, 14 but hey who am I to argue?
Not only did you write those numbers wrong but none of them are less than 10. Maybe the readers perceived ambiguity has less to do with their standard conventions than you think.
You’re in an engineering community, is ten-one actually wrong?
Consider the sequence: One, eleven, twenty-one, thirty-one, fourty-one, fifty-one… One hundred and one.
As far as the convention of writing numbers out in words when they’re less than 10, there’s also conventions for less than 15, wikimedia uses the convention if it can be written in two words it’s optional to write it out as words.
You’re right but in the specific context the meme addresses I would still argue against you. Perhaps in this hypothetical the reasoning for the convention was irrelevant to whether 11 can be written as eleven or ten-one. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, we are in an engineering community, on a post about numbers less than ten and you’re arguing with me about ten-one being more situationally valid than eleven when we both agree that 11 is just better.
Just a small note on this, style guides have all sorts of weird rules about spelling out numbers, most of which I personally think are nonsense, hence making a meme. Not necessarily just less than 10
Kinda ironic that for some reason the picture doesn’t load for me
Yeah not sure what happened to it :/ I uploaded it to Lemmy.world
Here it is again, just for you ;)
Well this is ironic. Something with Voyager, perhaps? I dunno.
It’s the bugs bunny no meme, for style guides asking you to spell out numbers under 10.
