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Your English is generally quite good. The one thing I'll note is that I've not seen native speakers use notation like "+10 years" in the context you do. General
by idle_zealot 4y ago
Your English is generally quite good. The one thing I'll note is that I've not seen native speakers use notation like "+10 years" in the context you do. Generally we'd write that as "10+ years" read as "ten-plus years" or ">10 years" read as "over ten years".
- rpgbr 4y agoThanks for the tip! I guess I use “+10 years” because of how we say in Portuguese (“mais de 10 anos”, as the “more than” comes first than the “10 years”).
- oxygenoxy 4y agoI suppose more people would read ">10 years" as "more than 10 years"?
- wbercx 4y agoHow would you interpret “+/- 10 years”?
- wingerlang 4y agoI don’t think they are comparable really. 10+ years means over ten years. +/- 10 years is an addition/subtraction and making a range.
- simonh 4y ago+10 years could be interpreted as 10 years in the future, and makes perfect sense in that context, but -10 years for the past seems weird. I'm not sure why.
- Macha 4y agoAs a margin of error. "this tree was planted 200 years ago, +/- 10 years" -> the tree was planted between 190 and 210 years ago. "this comet will next be seen in 100 years, +/- 10" -> The comet will visible between 90 and 110 years from now.
- wbercx 4y agoYeah, interesting. In The Netherlands it is commonly used to mean "more or less", or "approximately", unless it is used in formulas.
- davidbanham 4y agoFor “approximately 10 years” I would note it as ~10. Native Australian English speaker.
- ben174 4y agoIn English, "give or take".