- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
