A man who spent $100K to remove a lie from Google

Re:A man who spent $100K to remove a lie from Google by dragonwriter on Wednesday April 04, 2018 @04:11PM (#16758537)

> "2 1/2" is 2.5, even by a generous reading

While every style guide I've ever read would say never to do this for exactly this ambiguity, they also would demand that two-and-one-half, expressed as a mixed fraction, would be presented as “2½” if a fraction character is available or “2-1/2” in media where that isn't an option. With “2 1/2” as two space-separated elements, “two one-half days” is a more natural reading, IMO, than “two-and-a-half days”.

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Re:A man who spent $100K to remove a lie from Google by logfromblammo on Wednesday April 04, 2018 @04:48PM (#16758897)

I would further argue that the conceptual use of half-days is inappropriately imprecise, because that is itself ambiguous.

  12h       = 50% 24-hour calendar day
   6h       = 50% global mean 12 hours of daylight
   0h - 12h = 50% actual local hours of daylight
   4h       = 50% standard 8-hour workday
   5h       = 50% 8 AM to 6 PM business hours
   ???      = opening until midday break
   ???      = midday break until closing

Resolving ambiguity is a great job for a hyphen:

  2-1/2 days = two-and-a-half days
  2 1/2-days = two half-days

The rule to always hyphenate mixed fractions makes that explicit, although the hyphen is visually indistinguishable from a subtraction sign. Is it two minus a half? Which is why my personal rule is to never use mixed fractions, ever, for any reason, and to never write anything that looks like a mixed fraction. No style guide I have seen suggests 2+1/2, probably because some people might confuse (2+1)/2 with 2+(1/2). Just write 5/2 or 2.5 . (And if your number is at the end of a sentence, put a space between it and the period, so it won't be confused with a decimal point.)

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