CHAT: Measurements (was: Re: CHAT: browsers)

En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:

>
> And American people.
Yes, I meant "English-speaking people", forgetting that not everyone in the
English speaking world follows the same tradition.

 And I thought Europe did either 1.000 or 1'000, I
> see them often enough.
Indeed, 1.000 is the way to go in France, at least in printed material. 1 000
is good second :)) .

 (Australians do 1 000 unless the subject is
> money, when 1,000 is more common.) (Except that seperations are rare
> in
> four-digit numbers, I imagine because these can be read as either
> 'three
> thousand, four hundred', or 'thirty-four hundred', or because of their
> similarity to years, or because a single number by itself might be
> lost
> when there's no signal (like other groups).)
>
Or because we don't have a single word for "ten thousands" (which seems to me
to be the definite explanation ;)) ). As for Asian cultures which do have a
single word for "ten thousands" but still group figures in threes, that's due
to the fact that they borrowed the Arabic figures from us without adapting them
to their use.

>
> Ah, thanks. Strangely enough, in Chemistry, we would only talk of an
> atmosphere as being 101.2 kPa, and approximable as 100 kPa.
>
Indeed, strange. I only ever used kPa for small pressures of a few kPa.

>
> No, it's an English expression. 'What's that got to do with the price
> of
> fish (in China)?' means 'What's that got to do with anything?'.
>
Ah! Didn't know this one.

>
> Millibars aren't used here, for meteorology or otherwise (hence my
> mistake)---only hectopascals.
>
France is an interesting case. Millibars were the norm in meteo broadcasts,
until somebody decided that it was nicer to go to hectopascals, more SI ;)) .
So for a decade every meteo broadcast was talking in hPa. But then having the
presentator give exact pressure measurements in each sentence seemed to fall
out of use, and the meteo broadcasts stopped using measurements of pressure at
all (they just talked about "depressions" and "anticyclones"). Lately, I've not
been much in France, but for the little I've seen, there's a return of the
actual pressure measurements, which are given again in millibars! (which sounds
terribly old-fashioned to me, but for people younger than me is brand new ;)) )

>
> The Australian Style Guide recommends the use of thousands prefixes,
> so
> it seems like someone decided it was better.
Or rather that someone sanctioned an already common use into a rule. It is not
the same thing.

 And committee is spelt
> with
> a double m, a double t and a double e.
>
Thanks! Although I've seen comity too. Does it have a different meaning?

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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