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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007A Long Speech
In 1957, United States senator Strom Thurmond made a speech that lasted 24 hours, 19 minutes. - from www.odd-info.com > In 1957, United States senator Strom Thurmond made a speech that lasted > 24 hours, 19 minutes. - fromwww.odd-info.com And your reason for posting this on alt.usage.english is what, exactly? Since this topic has already been posted, I might as well make use of it. Is '24 hours,19 minutes' all right.I thought that unless a seconds count were also added,it could only be '24 hours and 19 minutes' Thanks in advance for any replies. > Since this topic has already been posted, I might as well make use of > it. > Is '24 hours,19 minutes' all right.I thought that unless a seconds > count were also added,it could only be '24 hours and 19 minutes' > Thanks in advance for any replies. I would use 'and' if I were also writing the numbers in words like this: twenty-four hours and nineteen minutes. That is the proper way to express a duration in written English. Once you start using figures, you are in the realm of informal notes, and you can do what you like. 24 hours 19 minutes 24 hours, 19 minutes, 24 hours and 19 minutes Whatever. > I would use 'and' if I were also writing the numbers in words like > this: twenty-four hours and nineteen minutes. That is the proper way to > express a duration in written English. Oh yeah? That idiotic habit seems limited to few especially perverse people who try to oblige everyone to first retranslate it all into numbers. > > I would use 'and' if I were also writing the numbers in words like > > this: twenty-four hours and nineteen minutes. That is the proper way to > > express a duration in written English. > Oh yeah? That idiotic habit seems limited to few especially perverse > people who try to oblige everyone to first retranslate it all into > numbers. Writing figures in formal English is deprecated. Aussi, monsieur le professeur, t'as oublié de poser un article indefini devant le mot 'few' dans votre écriture d'abruti. Anyway, I don't need to translate "twenty-four" into a number, because it is one already. Sale type de buveur de kro. > > > I would use 'and' if I were also writing the numbers in words like > > > this: twenty-four hours and nineteen minutes. That is the proper way to [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > Writing figures in formal English is deprecated. Only for small enough numbers. How small is "small enough" varies by style guide; I've seen several that call for any number over 100 to be expressed in numerals, and others suggest that the number must be at least 1000 to qualify. -=Eric > > Writing figures in formal English is deprecated. >Only for small enough numbers. How small is "small enough" varies by > style guide; I've seen several that call for any number over 100 to be > expressed in numerals, and others suggest that the number must be at > least 1000 to qualify. Yes but context is everything. If I were writing a novel, I think this "Sixteen thousand pounds!" said Joe. "You want me to pay sixteen thousand pounds for a two-week course? I wouldn't pay sixteen pence!" is better than this "£16,000!" said Joe. "You want me to pay £16,000 for a 2 week course? I wouldn't pay £0.16!" > > > Writing figures in formal English is deprecated. > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > Yes but context is everything. If I were writing a novel, I think this <snip example> Sure, but once you bring in the novel, then you've moved the goalposts. Writing in novels need not have any relationship to "formal English", as your original contention had it. -=Eric ... > > > I would use 'and' if I were also writing the numbers in words like > > > this: twenty-four hours and nineteen minutes. That is the proper way to > > > express a duration in written English. > > Oh yeah? That idiotic habit seems limited to few especially perverse > > people who try to oblige everyone to first retranslate it all into > > numbers. > Writing figures in formal English is deprecated. Of course it is. Imposed by some schoolmarm eons ago. Obliges a sizable minority of symbolically-thinking people to first retranslate meaningless blah into something that can be handled numerically. > Aussi, monsieur le > professeur, t'as oublié de poser un article indefini devant le mot > 'few' dans votre écriture d'abruti. Monsieur sera étonné d'apprendre que j'ai plutôt oublié deux virgules. Faudrait aussi décider si Monsieur vouvoie ou tutoie (auquel cas j'observerai qu'on n'a pas gardé les vaches ensemble). > Anyway, I don't need to translate > "twenty-four" into a number, because it is one already. No. It is a "word", at best. Cannot be made a basis for calculation before proper rearrangement. > Obliges a sizable > minority of symbolically-thinking people to first retranslate > meaningless blah into something that can be handled numerically. Ah comme la vie est dure ! What are "symbolically-thinking people"? > > Aussi, monsieur le > > professeur, t'as oublié de poser un article indefini devant le mot > > 'few' dans votre écriture d'abruti. > Faudrait aussi décider si Monsieur vouvoie ou tutoie Oui t'as raison > on n'a pas gardé les vaches ensemble. J'aime ça! Mais quant aux moutons... > > Anyway, I don't need to translate > > "twenty-four" into a number, because it is one already. > No. It is a "word", at best. Cannot be made a basis for calculation > before proper rearrangement. Three and three make six. Eight fours make thirty-two. I learned these facts when I was aged about six. Est-ce-que tu aimes Indochine ? Moi chui tellement fan ! [...] >> Writing figures in formal English is deprecated. > > Of course it is. Imposed by some schoolmarm eons ago. No, that isn't why. It's because when we write words, we write words. Changing codes mid-sentence is poor style. > Obliges a > sizable minority of symbolically-thinking people to first retranslate > meaningless blah into something that can be handled numerically. No, again: if the symbolically-thinking prefer "26" to "twenty-six" in all circumstances, and genuinely find "twenty-six" to be meaningless blah, then they're suffering a minor psychological weakness. I'm all for including the autistic and dyslexic in normal discourse, but we can't change a whole language to accommodate every single manifestation of those personalities.You wouldn't, I'm sure, recommend drawing a stick figure of an udder and a pair of horns instead of writing the word "cow" simply because of a personal preference for symbols over words. In a prose text we aren't handling a number numerically, in the sense of arithmetical manipulation, so arithmetical conventions for its representation don't apply. [...] >> Anyway, I don't need to translate >> "twenty-four" into a number, because it is one already. > > No. It is a "word", at best. Cannot be made a basis for calculation > before proper rearrangement. That's why we have separate codes for prose and for written calculation. "Twenty-six" is quite as much, or as little, a number as is "26": what it isn't is a mathematical notation. It's also a serious mistake to imply, as I think you do, that numbers are not words.  SignatureMike. -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com > [...] >>> Writing figures in formal English is deprecated. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > No, that isn't why. It's because when we write words, we write words. > Changing codes mid-sentence is poor style. I'm trying unsuccessfully to think of a domain in which Between nineteen seventy-two and nineteen eighty-five he earned precisely one million, two hundred forty-one thousand, six hundred seventy two dollars and thirty-seven cents. would be preferable to Between 1972 and 1985 he earned precisely $1,241,672.37. SignatureEvan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------ HP Laboratories |Pious Jews have a category of 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |questions that can harmlessly be Palo Alto, CA 94304 |allowed to go without an answer |until the Messiah comes. I suspect kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com |that this is one of them. (650)857-7572 | Joseph C. Fineman http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ > "MikeLyle" <mike_lyle...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> writes: > > [...] [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > > Between 1972 and 1985 he earned precisely $1,241,672.37. Hoist with my own brevity, when I thought I was being too long-winded. The usual prose convention is, of course, to put _some_ numbers in figures: I should have noted that, obvious though it is. Dates and larger numbers, in the main, as you've shown. Conventions differ, again of course: e.g. between newspapers and books, and between fiction and non-fiction. Even in fiction, certain types of smaller numbers will be expressed as figures: usually, I think, when they're not used mathematically, as in "Chanel No 5" or "G7". E&OE, as always. SignatureMike. On Jan 25, 5:14 pm, "Mike Lyle" <mike_lyle...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote: > >> Writing figures in formal English is deprecated. > > > > No, that isn't why. It's because when we write words, we write words. > > Changing codes mid-sentence is poor style. Why? I have never figures this out. I almost always write anything greater than one in figures. The figures can simply be though of as standard abbreviations for the words, no? > No, again: if the symbolically-thinking prefer "26" to "twenty-six" in > all circumstances, and genuinely find "twenty-six" to be meaningless > blah, 'Twenty-six' is not 'meaningless blah', it's just less meaningful than '26'. > then they're suffering a minor psychological weakness. I'm all for > including the autistic and dyslexic in normal discourse, but we can't > change a whole language to accommodate every single manifestation of > those personalities. I'm not autistic nor dyslexic. But if we have a shorter form that everyone that understnads as equivalent to the longer form, why not use it? Andrew Usher Hi.Thanks for your posts. I am practically the O.P of this post. I have some queries about what has been posted which have less to do with Engish usage than with psychology. But I am intrigued. One of the posters says that writing '24' for 'twenty-four' obliges people to retranslate it back to figures. I have never done this.I thought that it was the other way round -- that people translated figures into words. Indeed if you had to read '24' stripped of context, you would wonder whether it was twenty-four or 'two four'. Unless you were obliged to manipulate the numbers arithmetically, I didn't think you would translate any number into figures. And even this would likely be limited to such people, presumably a minority, who can't do arithmetic in their heads. I always thought that anyone who wrote '24' for 'twenty-four' was accomodating himself or humouring space constraints rather than accomodating his reader.But perhaps few people think this way nowadays. I have noticed that many people say 'one six four nine' even when they mean thousand six hundred and forty-nine and the string of figures seems to make more instinctive sense to them than the words.Has this phenomenon been investigated? Has it a name? I invite the polymath members of this site to share all the information on this topic they are aware of. Thanks in advance. > On Jan 25, 5:14 pm, "MikeLyle" <mike_lyle...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> > wrote: [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > > Changing codes mid-sentence is poor style. > Why? I have never figures this out. I almost always write anything > greater than one in figures. The figures can simply be though of as > standard abbreviations for the words, no? Y; but we dn't gen. use abbrs in frml prose. > > No, again: if the symbolically-thinking prefer "26" to "twenty-six" in > > all circumstances, and genuinely find "twenty-six" to be meaningless [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > change a whole language to accommodate every single manifestation of > > those personalities. > I'm not autistic nor dyslexic. I was addressing the bizarre claim that "twenty-six" looked like "meaningless blah". > But if we have a shorter form that > everyone that understnads as equivalent to the longer form, why not use > it? We could use shorthand and dispense with all this millennia-old nonsense of alphabets. SignatureMike. > I was addressing the bizarre claim that "twenty-six" looked like > "meaningless blah". It is bizarre, isn't it? Bizarre and at the same time revealing. [ ... ] > > Anyway, I don't need to translate > > "twenty-four" into a number, because it is one already. > > No. It is a "word", at best. Cannot be made a basis for calculation > before proper rearrangement. "24" is a numeral. It represents a number. SignatureBob Lieblich That's about all the math[s] I know The contrex entity posted thusly: >> > I would use 'and' if I were also writing the numbers in words like >> > this: twenty-four hours and nineteen minutes. That is the proper way to [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] >"twenty-four" into a number, because it is one already. Sale type de >buveur de kro. "Fer'ee Free? FER'EE FREE? How do you spell that?" "You don't spell it, do ya? It's a bleedin' number!" The jinhyun entity posted thusly: >Since this topic has already been posted, I might as well make use of >it. >Is '24 hours,19 minutes' all right.I thought that unless a seconds >count were also added,it could only be '24 hours and 19 minutes' >Thanks in advance for any replies. The latter is more often heard (in my area), but either way is perfectly acceptable. |
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