this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
58 points (93.9% liked)

Engineering Memes

1417 readers
1 users here now

About:

Memes about engineering for all disciplines.

Rules:

General Rules:

  1. No hate speech
  2. No harassment, calls to violence
  3. No advertisement

Posts:

  1. Must be a meme/joke/observation/attempt at humour
  2. Must be engineering related (software engineer humour probably better suited for programmer humour communities, though not explicitly banned)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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").

all 15 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

(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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Kinda ironic that for some reason the picture doesn't load for me

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Yeah not sure what happened to it :/ I uploaded it to Lemmy.world

Here it is again, just for you ;)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

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.