From: Ross Bamford <rossrt@...>
Date: 2006-05-11T16:08:19+09:00
Subject: [OT] Re: Thanks Ruby Quiz!

On Thu, 2006-05-11 at 07:03 +0900, Ray Baxter wrote:
> Charlie Bowman wrote:
> 
> > Is there a time at all where and is appropriate with integers?  I know
> > that and represents a . in a float (this has already been fixed with the
> > plugin)
> 
> Yes. There is prior art on this. Unfortunately is might be hard to 
> Google because it is older and the word "and" is a Google stop word. I'm 
> pretty sure that there is a paper or chapter by Knuth that addresses 
> both this issue and the English versus American usage of billion. Maybe 
> this is part of TeX?
> 

Billions are now unified, with even the BBC now using it to mean 1000
million. Previously, a billion here was one million million, while one
thousand million was sometimes a 'milliard' but this isn't used anymore.
Lots of other countries still use the 'old' definition, however, so it's
still shaky ground for making assumptions.

> Generally, for any number z = x + y where neither x, nor y is zero and 
> either x or y is a power of ten, then it is acceptable to say either
> 
> x.to_English + " " + y.to_english
> 
> or
> 
> x.to_english + " and " + y.to_english
> 

I think for an international audience, the second option is the best,
since I don't know anyone here in England who would consider the first
to be correct.

> This is recursive on x and y, but you would only want to use the second 
> form once per z for numbers less than one hundred thousand. So "one 
> hundred and twenty and three" is less preferred to "one hundred and 
> twenty three," but "one hundred and seventy six thousand, three hundred 
> and thirty two" is idiomatic.
> 
> In American speech, a single "and" usually falls in the penultimate 
> position, so "one hundred and twenty three" is preferred to "one hundred 
> twenty and three." The second seems more common in British English, but 
> perhaps this is archaic. If there are two "ands" then they are typically 
> in the first and penultimate positions.
> 

I've never heard e.g 'one hundred twenty and three' spoken - you may be
thinking of stuff like 'three and twenty' for 23, but that is archaic
and in any event doesn't fit with the 'one-hundred'. I guess it'd be a
bit like you guys saying "Six thousand, two hundred four-score and
seven".

-- 
Ross Bamford - rosco@roscopeco.REMOVE.co.uk