 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeDiscussion GroupsEnglish UsageBritish EnglishESL Teaching Learnglish.com Contact UsLink To UsSearch & Site Map |
Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2010is this sentence clear or correct?
<quote> Which of the following is true regarding a township? . B) A township is a 6 miles square. </quote> The author intends to define a square with 6 miles on each side. Is 'a 6 miles square' the correct way to say it? Thanks for teaching. A non-native speaker of English ><quote> >Which of the following is true regarding a township? [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >The author intends to define a square with 6 miles on each side. Is >'a 6 miles square' the correct way to say it? No. "six miles square" (without the "a") would be acceptable, although some complain. -GAWollman  SignatureGarrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993 > B) A township is a 6 miles square. The unit isn't made plural when a measure is used adjectivally: A township is a 6-mile square. This has to do with archaic genitive plural forms that were similar to the singular. See: http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxwhydow.html ¬R Fulio Pen asked about: > > B) A township is a 6 miles square. Glenn Knickerbocker corrected it to: > A township is a 6-mile square. But in another followup, Garrett Wollman effectively corrected it to: A township is six miles square. Both of these are correct and equivalent. The meaning is that it is a square with each side 6 miles, therefore having an area of 36 square miles. It should be added that as a matter of fact this is true in large parts of the US and Canada, but in both countries, not everywhere; and even where it is applicable, it's still not quite correct, because of the curvature of the Earth and, in Canada, road allowances. See "township" under http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/dictT.html and also follow the link from there to "section". SignatureMark Brader | "In the land of truth, my friend, Toronto | the man with one fact is king." msb@vex.net | --"In the Loop", Jesse Armstrong et al. My text in this article is in the public domain. [...] > Glenn Knickerbocker corrected it to: >> A township is a 6-mile square. [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > square with each side 6 miles, therefore having an area of 36 square > miles. . . . True. But I suspect that both forms are prone to misunderstanding, and that a clearer form would be "a square six miles on a side", lest hasty readers mistake it for an area of six square miles, a common misreading. SignatureCordially, Eric Walker, Owlcroft House http://owlcroft.com/english/ > Glenn Knickerbocker corrected it to: > > A township is a 6-mile square. > But in another followup, Garrett Wollman effectively corrected it to: > A township is six miles square. > Both of these are correct and equivalent. Syntactically, they're not equivalent at all. One's a noun and one's an adjective. You couldn't say, "A township is six miles circle." ¬R >> Glenn Knickerbocker corrected it to: >> > A township is a 6-mile square. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > Syntactically, they're not equivalent at all. One's a noun and one's an > adjective. You couldn't say, "A township is six miles circle." The corresponding construction would be "six miles circular"; "square" is not only a noun. While such parallel constructions do not idiomatically exist, that does not in itself make "six miles square" incorrect (just open to misinterpretation, as I previously noted). SignatureCordially, Eric Walker, Owlcroft House http://owlcroft.com/english/ Mark Brader: >>> Both of these are correct and equivalent. Glenn Knickerbocker: >> Syntactically, they're not equivalent at all. One's a noun and one's an >> adjective. I was not talking about the grammar. >> You couldn't say, "A township is six miles circle." Eric Walker: > The corresponding construction would be "six miles circular"; "square" is > not only a noun. While such parallel constructions do not idiomatically > exist, that does not in itself make "six miles square" incorrect (just > open to misinterpretation, as I previously noted). "Square" is an interesting case because we mostly measure area in square units, but we may want to define a square by its side length. Therefore we have the two expressions "X miles square" and "X square miles", quite different in meaning, but both very useful, which is why they'll certainly stay around even if a few people get them confused occasionally. Incidentally, those "few people" include one or more members of the OED staff. In the OED1 "square", adj., sense 1b, reads: # square inch, foot, yard, etc., a rectangular space measuring an inch, # foot, etc., either way. square mile: also spec. a familiar term for # the (heart of the) City of London. Obviously, that definition really applies to an "inch square", "foot square", etc., which is sense 5. (Yes, I've told them about the error.) Whereas the only common way to measure the dimensions of a square is to give the side length, for circles there are more choices. It is in fact possible to express area in "circular" units. This is mostly done with small units, I believe, so I'll use as my example "circular inch", which means the area of a circle whose diameter is 1 inch. However, something like "a 2-inch circle" would be unclear. I'd take 2 inches to be the diameter, but some others might take it to be the radius, and even the circumference is not out of the question. This notably arose when a colonial land grant of 1682 specified that it included land "lying within the Compass or Circle of Twelve Miles" about a certain point. The interpretation finally settled on was that this meant the radius was 12 miles, but that was disputed at least as late as 1732. And the significance of this circle is that part of it today it forms the northern boundary of the US state of Delaware. SignatureMark Brader | "/dev/null institutionalizes a regrettable loss of bits Toronto | that could have been transmitted to mailing lists and msb@vex.net | netnews. Our grandchildren will miss them." -- DMR My text in this article is in the public domain. >It should be added that as a matter of fact this is true in large parts >of the US and Canada, but in both countries, not everywhere; and even >where it is applicable, it's still not quite correct, because of the >curvature of the Earth and, in Canada, road allowances. See "township" >under In South Africa "township" refers to a working-class suburb, where occumpation was formerly restricted to black people, and where most of the inhabitants are black today. SignatureSteve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2012 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.