Possession of one...

[thekl0wn]

This came up this morning, and I haven't found a clear answer yet. I've seen this written both ways, but what is the correct possessive form of one? As in saying, "To get on (one's/ones) high horse.

 

[thekl0wn]

==>and thus 1's is one's preference

Is that in any way related to 2's compliment?

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> Is that in any way related to 2's compliment?
Not really, unless the 2s are saying nice things about the 1s.

However, the 2's complement representation of a number does have a lot of 1s.

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[pinkgecko]

I just know "1000's" drives me crazy. Not so much the apostraphe, but just the singular item being pluralized. "Thousands" is only a few more characters, or "1000+" is the same number of characters. "1000's" and "1000s" really grate on my nerves though.

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[stackdump]

pinkgecko, I concur with that. I really hate it when numbers are typed as their actual digit representation in text. Hard to explain what I mean but for example;

There are 2 ways this can be done <- Yuk!
There are two ways this can be done <- Better

There were 1000's of people present. <- Yuk
There were thousands of people present <- Better

However... when a number is a factual value, then using digits is fine...

There were 3,756 people present.

Although I would reword that something like;
The total number of people present was 3,756.

Maybe there's some kind of rule here, but it's one of those weird things where the text just seems better in some cases to use text and sometimes digits.

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> Maybe there's some kind of rule here,
There is. You should spell out values less than ten, and you should only use digits when dealing with specific values.

"There are 2 ways this can be done" is "yuk" (to quote stackdump) because '2' is less than ten. "There were 1000s of people present" is yuk because 1000s is not a specific value.


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[AnotherHiggins]

A commonly-cited rule:

- Spell out when the number is less than 10, otherwise use digits.

And I think that if you have both a large and a small number in the same sentence, you should be consistent and use digits.

I don't of any rule about "thousands / 1000s" off the top of my head.

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[AnotherHiggins]

you should only use digits when dealing with specific values

Well there you go!

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[SantaMufasa]

A commonly-cited rule...Spell out when the number is less than 10, otherwise use digits.

That is, of course, when we are referring to the concept of one item and not the symbol/numeral, "1".

...a lot of "1's" scattered about...

1 1
1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1
1
1

Above, we do not have a lot of "ones" scattered about -- we have a lot of "1s" scattered about.

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[Michael52x]

Right, then. Bob's your Uncle.
Are all you people from another planet? Im in the USA, and I give the best advise I can. But, there are posts that really crack me up! ONE, is the loneliest number that can ever be,,,,To all: Be at One.

"Impatience will reward you with dissatisfaction" RMS Cosmics'97

 

[pinkgecko]

You should spell out values less than ten, and you should only use digits when dealing with specific values.

I have a side job transcribing recorded interviews, and get stuck on this issue quite often. For example (using all digits):

I went to Water Tower 3, and saw 11 antelope there. 5 or 6 minutes later, or maybe 15 minutes, there was only 9 antelope.

So is it best to use all digits in the same paragraph if any of them should be digits? What about in the same document, if someone is saying they were five minutes late in the document, but later, they say they were 30 minutes late? Should you keep those consistent, or stick to the below 10 rule? You can see how I usually type it by what I did in this paragraph I just don't like the idea of going back to what's already been written and changing it for consistency, but I do like the idea of the entire thing being consistent. So I don't know.

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[AnotherHiggins]

Pink is the new black:

if you have both a large and a small number in the same sentence, you should be consistent and use digits.

I know that's right in a single sentence.

And I know that the entire document should NOT be changed to digits just because there some are some large numbers represented by digits.

But I'm not sure about within a paragraph.

One thing I can guarantee you: You can find different style guides that will give different rules. I think that as long as you tend to spell out small numbers and you are consistent in your approach, you're fine.

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[CajunCenturion]

I generally stick to the under ten rule, but there is a lot to be said for consistency. It's not wrong to be consistent throughout.

That being said, the above sentence has a couple of other issues that are in play. The first issue is "Water Tower 3". You've capitalized 'water' and 'tower' which imply that 'Water Tower 3' is a proper noun, specifically, the name of that water tower. If that is the case, and if the digit '3' is part of the proper name, then you always use the digit. You should never change the spelling or capitalization of a proper noun, and the spelling and capitalization is determined not by any grammar rules, but strictly by the owner. If a person spells their name or handle without capitals, then even though it's a proper noun, you do not capitalize it, even if it's the first word of a sentence. So if "Water Tower 3" is a proper noun, then it's "Water Tower 3", but if not proper, then it's "water tower three".

Secondly, you should not begin a sentence with a digit, even if it's part of a large multi-digit number. The second sentence should start with "Five" regardless of whether you're using digits everywhere else.

Also, unrelated to this thread, there should not be a comma after the '3', and the verb in the last sentence should be 'were', not 'was'. With respect to that last verb, since you're transcribing, you do not have the freedom to change someone else's words, so you use the "[sic]" notation to indicate that exact transcription.

Assuming that Water Tower 3 is a proper noun, I would write the sentence as follows:
"I went to Water Tower 3, and saw 11 antelope there. Fix or six minutes later, or maybe 15 minutes, there was [sic] only nine antelope."

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[Welshbird]

I would have completely different rules to all of these! (Welsh education again I suppose.)

As I was taught, figures are used in calculations, but when written they are always written out in full. So, your sentence in my way of thinking is this:

I went to Water Tower Three, and saw eleven antelope there. Fix or six minutes later, or maybe fifteen minutes, there were only nine antelope.

(and I couldn't be dealing with the was so just had to change it!)

Fee

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[AnotherHiggins]

-> always written out in full

Even if that includes writing out, "three hundred twenty five million four hundred seventy six thousand nine hundred eighty one"?

Wouldn't it be much easier for everyone involved (writer and reader) to just have it written as 325,476,981?

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[CajunCenturion]

I would make every effort to restructure the sentence so that neither would be first.

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[ESquared]

Except it's transcription so one can't change anything.

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[SantaMufasa]

And, John, since this is MAI, our MAI bylaws require us to mention that in your above spelling of 325,476,981, "twenty-five", "seventy-six", and "eighty-one" require hyphens.


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[Welshbird]

Another Higgins - Maybe you are right with numbers of that magnitude.

For more general things I would still write them out in full though rather than put figures into text.

Fee

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[ESquared]

What are the rules about hyphenation in spelled-out numbers? Always? I don't always see them.

My instinct says:

twenty six

and

twenty-six thousand.

Hmmm.

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[SantaMufasa]

What are the rules about hyphenation in spelled-out numbers?

Rule: Hyphenate multi-word labels for values between twenty-one and ninety-nine, regardless of order of magnitude. (i.e. fifty-five, seven hundred thirty-seven, three hundred eighty-two trillion one hundred ninety-one billion two hundred twenty million forty-six).

Mufasa
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