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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21049862
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").
Context is everything, IMO.
In engineering work, numbers should always be digits. In prose, numbers should be spelled out.
Breakfast at the Thompson's was a busy affair; 12 eggs and 6 rounds of toast for their 3 sets of boistrous twins.
Compared to
Breakfast at the Thompson's was a busy affair; twelve eggs and six rounds of toast for their three sets of boistrous twins.
To me it's pretty clear which of those reads better and more naturally as prose; digits really 'jump out' on the page, and while that is great for engineering texts, it is incongruent and distracting for prose.
Somewhat relevant to your example, recipes should have numbers in digits too. (But then again recipes are basically an engineering text.)
recipes are basically an engineering text
I would love to see more systematic recipe formats.
Around 15-20 years ago there was a website called "Cooking for Engineers" that used a table format for recipes that was pretty clever, and a very useful diagram for how to visualize the steps (at least for someone like me). I don't think he ever updated the site to be mobile friendly but you can see it here:
He describes the recipe in a descriptive way, but down at the bottom it lists ingredients and how they go together in a chart that shows what amounts to use, what ingredients go into a particular step, what that step is, and how the product of that step feeds into the next step.
Yeah that's fair. I personally prefer the first one, but I can see how it makes sense to not use digits there.
+1 ∆ for you (change my view points, a thing from r/changemyview)
In your example tho, you want those numbers to stand out. The reason the affair was busy, was because of the numbers. You want the numbers to jump out, because that's the important detail.
I appreciate your point, but I still believe spelled-out numbers work better.
In prose, especially fiction writing, the ideal case is that the words themselves slide neatly out of the way and become invisible, leaving only a picture in the reader's mind. Generally speaking, anything distracting is therefore counter-productive for fiction. Strange fonts and strange typesetting, while interesting, take the reader out of the prose. There's a reason almost every fiction book you pick up from the shelf uses Garamond.
In an engineering context, remembering exactly "12 eggs, 6 toast" is probably the most important thing, and numeric digits assist in that. In fiction however it doesn't matter if, by the next page, the reader has forgotten exactly how many eggs there were; the important aspect is to convey the sense of a large and chaotic family, and the overall impression is more important than the detail.
Thats why although the numbers are important for setting the scene, we really don't want them to jump out and steal attention. We don't want anything at all to have undue prominence, because the reader needs to process the paragraph as a cohesive whole, and see the scene, not the specific numbers.
What kills me is when people will mix the two in a single context.
"Between eight and 13 percent"
NO. If you're writing one number in digits, you need to write them all the same way.
Sometimes it’s actually better to mix them.
Example from Purdue Owl:
Unclear: The club celebrated the birthdays of 6 90-year-olds who were born in the city.
Clearer: The club celebrated the birthdays of six 90-year-olds who were born in the city.
But unlike eight 13 is above ten
But 8% and 13% are both below 10
So is 999%
And I've just learned percent is under two layers of keyboard menus so that's just fantastic.
This kills me, but its not as bad as the habit of new articles/print authors to switch between first and last names of the same person within a few sentences.
They will introduce Jeff Snoms, and then refer to them has "Jeff" and "Snoms" interchangeably for no discernable reason. It gets really maddening when they are doing it with 3 or 4 people, so suddenly the story has 2x as many characters involved.
Wait till you read russian novels, where everyone's got 3 names and 2 official nickname everyone is expected to know...
Oh damn, that is some nails on a chalkboard level stuff.
Engineer here.
Typically when I type out professional emails or documents that contain numerical values, I write out the number followed by the digits in brackets if it is ten [10] or below for cases of amount, unless I am listing out the counts of items, then I only use digits.
"The updated electrical design will require three [3] new, pad-mount 500kVA transformers to replace the three [3] existing 225kVA transformers,each located on floors four, five, and six."
Can I ask why, though? I'm also an engineer and I just never spell it out, if I can avoid it (so far, luckily, haven't had push back since I'm on delivery and not proposals or anything like that.)
To me, it's just more annoying to read it as words, and no matter what you do, mistakes can still happen, including when it's spelled out.
Just my 2 cents.
I work in MEP and our emails are always considered legal documents as they can be used as evidence if ever we are taken to court. So we always treat them very technical and try to over explain everything so clients/plan reviewers/contractors can't misinterpret. It's kind of an old school thing, but the head of our department is an old school guy.
There are exceptions to every rule. Sometimes it ends up being "between five and 15" which is psychotic.
"One and eight hundred and fifty two thousandths".
Or
"1.852"
You get to decide what's efficient to communicate a specific value based on the criticality of precision and the format of communication.
Like it or not, but peak-compatibility IS peak-efficiency when it comes to language.
1.852 all the way in every single context. I will die on this hill haha
I especially hate what we the Czechs do. We mostly read numbers the same (21 = twenty one), but then once every blue moon some dimwit says 21 like "one and twenty" like he's fucking German or something. German is bad enough, but why do we have to mix it???
Caveat, not including multipliers, like "273 billion"
You mean 273e9?
More like 273G in engineering.
TIL engineers use gazillion
It’s a highly technical term for “lots and lots.”
Only if you have a unit.
273 GW 👍
Else, looks kind weird, to my eyes anyway. But fair point haha
I'll allow billion, but personally my preference is using powers of 10 or unit prefixes.
Just I'm not gonna be mad about the newspaper writing 3.5 billion dollars.
Any number that I write down is a number. I am not writing novels, the numbers I write down are supposed to be easy you find. You look through the document to find numbers, that is easy to do.
Three and four hundred fifteen quintillion five hundred ninety two quadrillion six hundred fifty three trillion five hundred eighty nine billion seven hundred ninety three million two hundred thirty eight thousand four hundred sixty three sextillionths
Is less than ten
Not just an engineer thing though. Everyone finds it obnoxious.
In nineteen ninety eight The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and he plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.
I spell out numbers when I want to emphasize them.
Take George Orwell for example:
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" has a lot more of a punch to it than just "1984."
I used to work in a library, and I hate this. We used to have both a "2001: a space Odyssey" and a "two thousand and one: a space oddesey", sorted based on the spelling.
00, 01, 10 there i did it
Next you’re gonna ask me to use actual scientific notation instead of to the most relevant 3 decimal points. I will not use your bullshit centimeters, that’s just 10 mms
Absolutely, mm > cm all the way. Other than you putting s at the end of mm, we don't take the Lord's (metric) name in vain around here.
I do feel kind of sorry for East Asia though, since their languages seperate at intervals of 10⁴, rather than 10³. The giga and mega prefixes just make no sense there. 1 GW = 10,0000,0000 W and 1 MW = 100,0000.
Language strikes again
Not sure, but perhaps they would prefer a prefix of 10^-4^ rather than mm (10^-3^).
Nein
For manufacturing I've taken to using spelled out numbers when quantities and names both use numbers. Four 4s rather than 4 4s. Makes it harder for someone to speed through an email and get the completey wrong information.
I somehow have "spell out if less than 13" burned in my mind from somewhere in middle school. No idea if it is right, but so far it has worked.
As a mathematician, I refuse to do this.
Stay strong friend 🫡, and don't you let them take your numerals from you
Spell out numbers under 10, but not when it's divisible by three or five.