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In this sentence:

“Since the aggregates sank so rapidly and the water column was more or less ‘empty’ on day 50, they must have settled out,” Smetacek argues. “Layers of fluff have been reported from various regions, including the Southern Ocean.”

What does “on day 50” mean in that sentence? Does it mean “in 50 days”?

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2 Answers 2

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Yes, that’s right. It means fifty days out from the start of some time period, such as a journey or since the start of some experiment.

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  • +1 But fifty full days may not have passed. If it started on noon of Day1 and you measured on Day50 at noon, 49 days worth of hours have passed, but it is still Day50. If there were a need for more precison, the phrase should be "at the conclusion of 50 days.*
    – bib
    Commented Sep 22, 2012 at 2:44
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    Some technical writers label the first day of the experiment "day 0".
    – user21497
    Commented Sep 22, 2012 at 3:03
  • @bib: I agree. There is some numbering of days that is being referred to, and this is an event that occurred on the day designated 50 by this numbering system. More than that, we can't say.
    – David Schwartz
    Commented Sep 23, 2012 at 7:22
  • in normal English we understand "day 1" or "the first day" to be the day some event started, and count from there. If a time period started on April 1, than April 1 is "day 1" or "the first day", Aprili 2 is "day 2" or "the second day", etc. Other ways of counting are possible, and you could argue are better, but they're not how people normally count and require explanation if used.
    – Jay
    Commented Apr 4, 2016 at 14:00
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If English were logical, I'd say that "on day fifty" means "forty-nine days out." Day one is the first day, day two is one day out, day three is two days out, etc.

Since English is not logical, I'll just say that "on day fifty" is ambiguous.

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  • English is more logical compared with Chinese, I think. As to this question, the first day shall be also counted.
    – clay686
    Commented Sep 22, 2012 at 2:23
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    @clay686 Can you provide some documentation that (a) English is a logical language, and that (b) it's more logical than Chinese? I find both assertions impossible to accept, but I'm open to being persuaded by concrete evidence of the accuracy of these claims. I think Japanese is the most "logical" of the languages that I've studied, much more so than English, but I could easily be wrong about that. I suppose it depends on which connotation of logical one means. The best English essays are definitely more "logical" than the best Chinese essays, but that's culture, not linguistics.
    – user21497
    Commented Sep 22, 2012 at 3:13
  • @clay686: "Watch what you say, or they'll be calling you a radical" (Supertramp, The Logical Song)
    – J.R.
    Commented Sep 22, 2012 at 8:17

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