The shortness of a thing is an aspect of its length. Your comment makes no sense. Five times shorter means that you can play Mirage five times in the same time it takes to play Valhalla once. I’m pedantic as hell but this comes off to me as fake pedantry.
Yeah, I’m being quite pedantic, but it is genuine. It’s a common language mistake that frustrates me.
Don’t try to multiply a relative descriptor when you can use hard numbers (i.e. it’s 20 hours shorter) or the appropriate relative measurement (i.e. it’s 20% as long). It’s both improper English and less clear (maybe “2 times harder to understand”?) to do so.
What is “five times shorter?” Is that one fifth as long? We can’t really measure the shortness of a thing, only its length.
Sorry, it’s a pet peeve of mine.
I would have commented just this and nothing else if you weren’t already doing god’s work.
It should have said “…is 0.2 times longer”
No, that would be 20% longer, not five times shorter.
20% longer means 120% of the length.
Yes but how girthy is it?
Yeah, good point. May just be clear and say “It is 1/5th the length”?
0.2 times as long.
0.2 times the length of*
I read that as 20% longer… aka 120% the length.
What about “…is 0.2 times the length”
The shortness of a thing is an aspect of its length. Your comment makes no sense. Five times shorter means that you can play Mirage five times in the same time it takes to play Valhalla once. I’m pedantic as hell but this comes off to me as fake pedantry.
Yeah, I’m being quite pedantic, but it is genuine. It’s a common language mistake that frustrates me.
Don’t try to multiply a relative descriptor when you can use hard numbers (i.e. it’s 20 hours shorter) or the appropriate relative measurement (i.e. it’s 20% as long). It’s both improper English and less clear (maybe “2 times harder to understand”?) to do so.
I think we can measure your shortness of breath right there, tho
Nope, but you can measure my respiratory rate.