this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
466 points (97.6% liked)

Science Memes

11148 readers
2089 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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").

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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."

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Isn't that part of the reason we have Dewey/LoC system?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Those are for academic books, not novels. And you'd still sort everything within a category alphabetically by author and then by title (usually)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I found Larry Flynt's autobiography at my university's library using the LCCN system.

Then again that's a University library so it might be different.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah haha, this is why it came to my mind. In this case it's a title, so not really for the purpose of being used as a number.

Though, I suppose I didn't specify this