When talking about the growth of a production plant, which of the following is correct, and why?
We are growing in area and number of employees.
Or:
We are growing in area size and number of employees.
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1@All Please remember that answers go in the answer box. Comments are for requesting clarification of the question.– Andrew Leach ♦Commented Sep 15, 2023 at 7:18
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3 Answers
"area size" is not an idiomatic phrase. "area" already refers to the amount of space, adding "size" is redundant.
So "growing in area" is the more correct one of the two phrases.
In the US you are likely to hear square footage, meaning area when measured in units of square feet.
You might also hear floor space or floor area to indicate the interior area of a building.
In your examples, I don't believe "area size" would be commonly used because it is redundant. Either area or size might be used alone, as in
We are increasing the size/area/floor space/square footage of our production facility.
answered Sep 15, 2023 at 13:22
A colloquialism is footprint.
As the attestations show, it is a very common phrase in the context of business expansion, and so anyone who reads about business is not likely to confuse it with "environmental footprint" or "carbon footprint" which are a measure of a company's deleterious effects upon the planet's natural environment.
The company's footprint is getting larger. Not only has our workforce doubled in size, we have purchased land and built new facilities.
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This doesn't work. I've only heard "footprint" as being short for "environmental footprint" which is also the only relevant definition in my dictionary (NOAD).– Laurel ♦Commented Sep 15, 2023 at 13:03
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@Laurel: I think it can work - eg it can mean the shape on the ground that is covered by something such as a building.– psmearsCommented Sep 15, 2023 at 13:21
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@Laurel You didn't look very hard, especially given your emphatic "This doesn't work." google.com/…– TimRCommented Sep 15, 2023 at 14:17
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Dictionaries are "lagging indicators", as we say. The word has to exist before the editors of the dictionary recognize it. The dictionaries don't confer existence upon the word, merely recognition.– TimRCommented Sep 15, 2023 at 14:21
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1Without the word environmental it wont confuse anyone but the easily confused. It is a very common usage, especially in business expansion contexts, which is OP's context.– TimRCommented Sep 15, 2023 at 14:22