Questions tagged [measuring-units]
Questions about units of measure
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Use of singular in the title “The Three-Body Problem” [duplicate]
The title of the Chinese book 三体, written by Liu Cixin, was translated as The Three-Body Problem. This is also the name of a famous physics problem.
My question is: why do we say the three-body and ...
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What is the metric name or designation for nominal ½″ copper pipe in the various English dialects where metric dimensions are used?
I hope this question is as on-topic as this question about distances.
I need to know what people call nominal ½″ copper pipe (the stiff unbendable kind used in domestic plumbing) in English dialects ...
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How to deal with currency symbols when combined with other units
It seems that pretty much all documentation I've read is clear on where to place the currency symbol when dealing with currency amounts in English (let us assume English from UK for this example):
£...
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Etymology of "mile" -> mille passus -> thousand steps - not large enough a distance
It is undisputed that a mile (measure of distance) comes from the latin mille passus. Mille means one thousand (1,000) and passus is translated to the Engish cognate "paces". It is therefore ...
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Is there a scale unit between thousand and million which is in one word?
10^2 is a hundred. 10^3 is a thousand. 10^6 is a million.
Is there a scale unit for 10^4, 10^5 or others?
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Units of measure in a 'between' range
I've seen lots of similar questions, but none exact to what I'm working with. Example:
Ex. 1: "The result should be between 100 and 300 mm/hr."
Ex. 2: "The result should be between 100 ...
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Singular/plural nouns with units and 'how many'
Trying to work out whether to use 'is' or 'are' in the following sentences (aware they might differ):
How many grams of flour is/are on the scale?
How many centilitres of cough syrup are/is in the ...
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Do we say and write 21 / 31 / 41 item or itemS?
I've been wondering, since these example numbers end with 1, isn't it natural to use the following noun in its singular form?
From what I've been seeing around on the web this does not seem to be the ...
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Should thin spaces be used between numerals and units? [closed]
After starting to use the siunitx package for typesetting units (and the numerals before the units) in LaTeX, I noticed that it typesets a single space between a numeral and a unit (a space that is ...
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Plural or singular when being asked "What's the unit in which a quantity is measured?" [closed]
Example 1: "What's the common measuring unit of the speed of a car in the United States?"
Do we say "It's mile per hour" or "It's miles per hour"?
Example 2: "Please enter the degrees of the angle:" ...
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Unit of measurement for services
I try Googling but couldn't come up with a valid answer.
If I were to create a quotation, what is the correct unit to use for various kind of services. For other object, the unit would be like piece,...
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Correct order for prices per unit
In English, currencies should go before the number (i.e. €24.47). Other units should go after (i.e. 3 m2).
But what is the correct order when you mean to give a price per unit (using the slash sign ...
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"5 weeks pregnant" or "5 week pregnancy?"
From my understanding both "5 weeks pregnant" and "5 week pregnancy" are grammatically correct but I don't know when to use one instead of the other and which one sounds more natural for native ...
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How to say non-USD currencies
How would someone say the following when spoken (i.e. a financial report):
USD currently trading at SGD $1.36
I think both (A), (B), (C) below are valid and common (using the bold word before the ...
CommunityBot
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Correct spelling for the abbreviation "FPS" (frames per second) [duplicate]
Well-known game journalists TotalBiscuit and Jim Sterling use [the number of frames per second] fps instead of 30FPS or 30 FPS, without an intervening space between the units and the following units (...
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What's the proper way to use the word "depth"? Is it "at 15 feet depth" or should it be "at a depth of 15 feet"? [duplicate]
For example:
The phreatic surface is encountered at 15 feet depth.
or
The phreatic surface is encountered at a depth of 15 feet.
The first sentence seems to be easier to read.
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Is there a word for the name or base unit of a currency?
Many currencies are named using the following pattern: {adjectival form of their country of issue} {base unit}
Examples:
Portuguese escudo
Turkish lira
Similarly, dollar is not a currency, but the ...
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What unit do you describe when talking about relative time?
In the same format a microwave puts things (as in, an amount of time from the present and not part of standard time), this should be able to be written in sentence, but I'm unsure which unit to use. ...
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Should you say "0.9 second" rather than "0.9 seconds"?
When looking through the National Physical Laboratory's SI unit conventions, I have found a strange clause in their list:
For unit values more than 1 or less than -1 the plural of the unit is ...
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Is "a half dozen" necessarily 6, or can it be 5-7?
In my answer to a question on the SF & Fantasy stack, I assumed that "half a dozen" is imprecise enough to mean anywhere from 5 to 7. Another user challenged that assumption and stated that since ...
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that does not/do not, was/were [duplicate]
I have the two sentences below and I can't seem to figure out which one, in both cases, would be correct. They "sound" equally correct to me.
Sentence 1
We should make patterns that are ...
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Plural/singular verb agreement with units
When writing about specific quantities, should the verb reflect a singular or a plural value? Do abbreviations vs. spelled-out words make any difference?
I took 2 ml of water, which was/were then ...
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"Each/every 5 ml contains..." - which is correct?
Many drug leaflets for liquid dosage forms state how much of the active ingredient is found in 5 ml of the solution.
Would it be correct to state it as "Each 5 ml of the solution contains..."...
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Subject-verb agreement with implied subject [duplicate]
tl;dr Which is the appropriate verb in the following sentence?
Apparently, 2,000 steps [is/are] hazardous to my sleep.
I use a sleep app that calculates a (dubious) sleep quality value and tracks ...
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What is the word to describe a variable whose value does not relate to any absolute unit of measure?
What the title says. I know there's a word but can't remember it.
To explain in more detail, I'm trying to state that while the variable is quantitative, the quantity is not referring to an ...
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"Foot" or "feet" when referring to rope?
My friend, when referring to his landlord, said:
"what she could do with is 9 foot of rope"
I say it should be feet of rope, not foot. He says both can be correct: 'when referring to height ...
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What Is the Real Name of the #?
I used to say "sharp sign" to refer to the # sign.
Today a friend told me that the correct term is number sign or hash sign or even just hash.
What is the difference between these options and what'...
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Including units of a measure in a range
When specifying a range of values that have a unit of measure associated with them, what is the best practice for where to include the unit of measure?
1lb - 20lb
Or
1 - 20lb
And how would ...
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What's the 'name' for the variation of period units that end in 'ly'?
If I call week, month, year, day = singular unit
weeks, months, years, days = plural unit
What do/can I call = weekly, monthly, yearly (though maybe 'annually'), daily - ?
PS: I'm aware of this ...
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Abbreviation for Ton
I went to wikipedia looking for the symbol/abbreviation for ton. t would be ambiguous since there is both a short ton and a long ton, which mean two different weights.
I cannot find a standard ...
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Is there an equivalent of “nychthemeron” that specifically starts at midnight?
That is, is there a word for the 24-hour period starting at midnight?
I know that technically a day means either 24 hours
or the period of time between sunrise and sunset, and
that day and ...
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Mentioning a physical unit after a series of values
I have problem deciding which one of the following sentences is correct considering the usage of second(s):
Computation times of the proposed algorithms are in the orders of 10^-3 and 10^-4 seconds, ...
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Hyphenating measurements in case of a fraction
I am now quite comfortable with the rules of hyphenating measurements (For example, 5-foot-long rod, 7-inch-long handle, etc.) However, what is the rule for hyphenation if the number is a fraction. ...
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Does one hyphenate height when given in feet and inches?
In a work of fiction I'm writing, I'm using the colloquial phrase five-one to refer to someone's height. Should that be hyphenated as five-one, or should it just be written woth a space separating the ...
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Punctuation with units
I remember reading somewhere that if a unit is abbreviated as one character, there must not be a space between the number and the unit (e.g., 5m, 26K). If the unit is abbreviated as two or more ...
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How should I write units? [duplicate]
In a scientific article, should I write "3m", "3 m", "3 meters", or "3 [meters]"?
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How do you distinguish between the two possible distances meant by "five blocks"?
In American towns and cities, blocks are not usually perfectly
square. If I am correct, the south–north side of a block is
several times longer than its west–east side is.
So five blocks can ...
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What do you call "one hundredth of a second"?
As in:
He broke the world record of 14.05
I tried searching Wikipedia and ended up with centisecond. It sounds so scientific. What is it called in colloquial English?
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Height and Weight — How to write them when abbreviations are not used
Height and Weight — How to write them when abbreviations are not used.
He was a 6-foot 5-inch man.
(Not: 6-foot-5-inch man, with three hyphens.)
She gave birth to a 7-pound 11-ounce baby.
(Not: 7-...
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Does the currency sign (¤) go before, or after the amount?
Should the currency sign (¤) come before, or after the amount of money?
Should it be "¤ 1.00", or "1.00 ¤"?
Should there be a space between ¤ and the amount?
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Is it 0.5 ampere or 0.5 amperes? [closed]
If it's written as "0.5 ampere", shouldn't we write "0.5 hour" and not "0.5 hours"?
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Numerical agreement for 5000 buckets of water
5000 buckets of water is removed from a cubical water tank.
or
5000 buckets of water are removed from a cubical water tank.
I think the first one is correct because 'water' is an uncountable noun. Am ...
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Use of singular or plural form for decimal money units
According to these following articles:
The Chicago Manual of Style Online:Numbers: Q. When referring to decimals from zero to one, are they singular or plural?
Stack Exchage (English Language & ...
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What is a yard of (pudding, ale, etc.)?
I was just reading William and Ceil Baring-Gould's sadly under-Annotated Mother Goose, in which rhyme #274 is:
Hyer iddle diddle dell,
A yard of pudding's not an ell;
Not forgotten, tweedle-dye,
A ...
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Why don't we pluralize "foot" in measurements?
For example, to answer the question, "How tall are you?" valid answers include:
Five feet.
Five foot three.
Five feet, three inches.
Why the discrepancy between feet and foot, seemingly only in the ...
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Are there other idioms like "a stone's throw away" that both describe an activity and act as a measurement?
If something is quite close by, it could be described as being a stone's throw away; even closer might be a hop, skip and a jump. I'm interested in these "units" of measurement based on human action. ...
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Can gallons be used for measuring size? And if so - how many inches is it?
I have found the following passage in a book.
"Stack 12 (based on the participation of 22 children) gallon-size, resealable plastic bags together. Staple them across the bottom to make the binding of ...
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Thickness of a pencil, width of a dime, or as thick as a human hair
If a person wants to describe the dimensions of something to someone, they'll often relate the measurement of a thing to the size of an everyday household object.
Examples:
It's the thickness of a ...
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Are units in English singular or plural?
I am a little bit confused about using units in English, sometimes I hear that people use singular units for plural things, sometimes they use plural ones. Which one is correct?
3 meter(s) long?
...
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measure of quantity: a hundred of bricks
According to the entry of "hundred" in the OED
Only in measures of quantity, the structure is a hundred of
bricks.
What does measure of quantity mean here, especially as opposed to a hundred ...
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