death toll

[deka]

Hi, I am a Brazilian girl and I have a doubt abour numbers in English.
I have a book in English where there is a tabel on cumulative civilian
death toll in wars. They put "100s africans, 1000s civil war..." and I
would like to know the meaning of the little "s" after the numbers.
Tanks very much.

 

[Eleanor McHugh]

Hi, I am a Brazilian girl and I have a doubt abour numbers in English.
I have a book in English where there is a tabel on cumulative civilian
death toll in wars. They put "100s africans, 1000s civil war..." and I
would like to know the meaning of the little "s" after the numbers.
Tanks very much.

100s reads as 'hundreds'
1000s reads as 'thousands'


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

 

[deka]

100s reads as 'hundreds'
1000s reads as 'thousands'

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brainshttp://slides.games-with-brains.net

Ellie,
Thank you very much!

 

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Hi, I am a Brazilian girl and I have a doubt abour numbers in English.
I have a book in English where there is a table on cumulative civilian
death toll in wars. They put "100s africans, 1000s civil war..." and I
would like to know the meaning of the little "s" after the numbers.

Notice that this is very bad typological style to print digits in
these cases. They should have spelled them out: "hundreds of
africans, thousands of civil wars".



(It could be tolerated for decades, like the 60s or the 70s (the
sixties, the seventies), but this is not "Y2K-compliant", and writting
1960s is not good style either, so even in this case it's better to
spell the numbers out).

 

[Eleanor McHugh]

Notice that this is very bad typological style to print digits in
these cases. They should have spelled them out: "hundreds of
africans, thousands of civil wars".

In prose yes, but for table headers space considerations are relevant
and I've seen the same approach used in numerous publications.

(It could be tolerated for decades, like the 60s or the 70s (the
sixties, the seventies), but this is not "Y2K-compliant", and writting
1960s is not good style either, so even in this case it's better to
spell the numbers out).

I'd say that 1960s would be a much more common occurrence than
nineteen sixties, although 60s and sixties probably are more evenly
distributed in my reading.


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

 

[Roger Pack]

Notice that this is very bad typological style to print digits in
these cases. They should have spelled them out: "hundreds of
africans, thousands of civil wars".

or at least written them as
100's and 1000's
-=r

 

[Eleanor McHugh]

or at least written them as
100's and 1000's

Except that would in principle be 'of the hundred' and 'of the
thousand' as using the numeric form isn't an abbreviation and so an
apostrophe before the s isn't appropriate for pluralisation. It is
however an increasingly widespread usage (thanks to the inability of
many people to use the apostrophe correctly).


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

 

[Robert Klemme]

Except that would in principle be 'of the hundred' and 'of the
thousand' as using the numeric form isn't an abbreviation and so an
apostrophe before the s isn't appropriate for pluralisation. It is
however an increasingly widespread usage (thanks to the inability of
many people to use the apostrophe correctly).

The same happens over here in Germany, just the other way round:
although German does not allow for an apostrophe when building a
genitive you can see "Dietmar's Hotel" and like phrases with increasing
frequency where "Dietmars Hotel" would have been correct. In the end we
will probably all speak some form of "English".

Cheers

robert

 

[Eleanor McHugh]

The same happens over here in Germany, just the other way round:
although German does not allow for an apostrophe when building a
genitive you can see "Dietmar's Hotel" and like phrases with
increasing frequency where "Dietmars Hotel" would have been
correct. In the end we will probably all speak some form of
"English".

There is a school of thought which believes all punctuation is evil...


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net

 

[Srijayanth Sridhar]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Lol, this could quickly spiral into another beat the dead horse session aka
pythonic indentation. Or was it the other way around?

Jayanth

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 2:38 AM, Eleanor McHugh <

 

[Robert Klemme]

Lol, this could quickly spiral into another beat the dead horse session aka
pythonic indentation. Or was it the other way around?

It was: the dead horse beat Python with its indentation.

robert

 

[Caleb Clausen]

It was: the dead horse beat Python with its indentation.

I thought we were beating a horse to death with a python. I think the
python wasn't too happy about it either.

 

[Srijayanth Sridhar]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Oh. Is that what caused the indentations to begin with?

Jayanth