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Designing content for people who struggle with numbers
- toddmorey 3y agoThis is good guidance except they get the date format wrong. (Teasing. I’ve always thought the US MM/DD/YYYY format makes absolutely no sense. Why don’t the units go small, bigger, biggest? Why do we continue to put up with that?)
- avmich 3y agoDates like 2023-09-21 looks like a pretty good approach, except, apparently, when communicating with Kazakhstan-related peers.
- kevinventullo 3y agoI prefer YYYY-MM-DD format because alphabetical order corresponds to chronological order.
- fsckboy 3y agoi invented my own which i find easier or at least more useful to read, and a requirement is it does sort properly: YYYYMMmonDD today is 202309sep21 because i use it for filenames, i don't put in extra punctuation, there are enough cues in the format as is. To really see it, imagine scanning a list of files with different dates it will still collate properly mixed with languages other than english
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sokoloff 3y agoMaybe I'm not understanding something, but it seems like it would not collate properly with mixed languages: 202304abr22 - My Spanish appointment 202304apr15 - My English appointment 202304avr07 - My French appointment If you placed the month at the end, it would: 20230407avr - My French appointment 20230415apr - My English appointment 20230422abr - My Spanish appointment
- fsckboy 3y agooh, you make a good point. I'm generally using it for monthly bank statements and whatnot so I'm not looking for fine grained collation, just grouping of "like with like", and i have some international accounts
- Nevermark 3y agoI like that, and if day of week is relevant: 20230915sepFRI Or for a legibility/size tradeoff: 2023.09.15.sep.fri All that left is adding the Chinese zodiac year! 2023.09.05.rab.sep.fri Now I am just slightly bothered that the abbreviated words don’t form an isomorphic representation to the numeric. :( 2023.09.05.3watrab.sep.3fri There! 3rd Friday in September, 3rd Water Hare from the first in 1903! :) (In the US we could name years in the form: 4th year of Roosevelt, etc.)
- bearmode 3y agoYeah, and that's great for storing things in databases. Not for everyday communication. We talk in terms of most relevant to least relevant - the day (or time) is typically most relevant, with the year being least.
- Nevermark 3y agoIt’s also consistent with ordering numbers from highest base to lowest: 1023 (1000, 100, 10, 1) 123.456 (100, …, 0.001) I also like YYYY-MM-DD To save screen space I often use decimals in file names: 2023.05.23 Design Summary
- NeoTar 3y agoI think if you are writing for a single-language audience (as here), then the best format is to write the month in full as they advise (6 August 2018), because it will totally avoid ambiguity.
- Lio 3y ago> I think if you are writing for a single-language audience (as here) An interesting point is that the NHS has to deal with many languages and people that don't have English as a first language. That's another reason for being very explicit.
- mulmen 3y agoDD/MM/YYYY also makes no sense because it doesn’t sort lexicographically and each component is big endian but the overall date is little endian. Only YYYY/MM/DD HH24:MI:SS makes sense. Choose your sepators.
- bearmode 3y agoIn everyday use, the year is the least important part. It makes perfect sense in many cases. It's in order of most relevant information to least. YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS has its place as well, but not here.
- mulmen 3y agoHow do you write the time? Do you put seconds or minutes before hours? Why not? How do you write the year? Do you put decade before century? How do you write numbers? Do you put the ones place before the tens? Toddmorey asked why units don’t go from small to large and I explained that it is inconsistent with how we write numbers. Thus, there’s no logical reason to do anything other than large to small. Anything other than ISO 8601 is preferred only for familiarity and no such inconsistent format is inherently more correct or logical.
- bearmode 3y ago>How do you write the time? Do you put seconds or minutes before hours? Why not? No, because the seconds are rarely important. >How do you write the year? Do you put decade before century? No, because that's not how numbers work. >How do you write numbers? Do you put the ones place before the tens? Same answer. >Toddmorey asked why units don’t go from small to large and I explained that it is inconsistent with how we write numbers. Dates aren't numbers. There is a lot more context and meaning around dates that we need to consider when we verbalise and write them. But, for the purposes of e.g. data storage then absolutely - we can consider them no different from numbers. You have to understand that isn't the case with conversational English, though.
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- browningstreet 3y agoI usually know what month it is. I often have no idea what day it is. Anchoring date format in month first gives me a warm-fuzzy that allays anxiety when I’m punched in the gut by the mysterious “day of month” detail. I usually need to know today’s date more often than I need historical ones. None of this helps with organizing photo libraries, legal documents and video archives. /s but maybe not…
- koreth1 3y agoMy theory has always been that it's purely an artifact of the spoken language. When we're saying a date out loud, we Americans tend to say, "September 21st, 2023," whereas I've noticed many of the Brits I've worked with have tended to say, "21st September, 2023," sometimes with an "of" after the day. Those spoken word orders were carried over into the written form, is my suspicion.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoI don't think that's the case; I think the spoken style is derived from the written form.
- Lio 3y agoI guess that could be true. Certainly in the UK if someone asked you the date, you'd probably contract that to just saying "the 21st". If the the month was unclear you might reply with "21st of what?" but you'd never expect an answer of just "September" to the question "What's the date?". My assumption was it's due to an attempt to make the written date format closer to the HH:MM, and they just forgot about the years, with the spoken "Month, DayOfMonth" coming later. Do people in the US generally say "the 4th of July" or "July, 4th" more? That might hint at an origin.
- jostylr 3y agoIt depends on whether one is referring to the date (see you July 4th) or the holiday (Can't wait for the 4th of July). Though I do think the date version might be becoming more common than the holiday version. As for why the month comes first, I get the feeling we Americans care about precision up to a month and less so about the numerical day such as "When does school start?" with an answer of "School starts in September". Obviously people need the precise date if you actually have a student going, but in a lot of conversation, people are just looking for the month. I can imagine that being even more true in earlier times. We also peg things to months such as our elections being the second Tuesday of November or Labor Day being the first Monday of September. Note that in those phrases we are putting the day kind of first, but not in a particular numerical way. The month is what sticks out as a rough guesstimate of the time period.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- creativenolo 3y agoCue: a comprehensive map of all the countries that use the MM/DD/YYYY format https://twitter.com/TerribleMaps/status/1620111664078290945 https://twitter.com/TerribleMaps/status/1620111664078290945
- lemming 3y agoIt’s wild to me how prevalent and yet how poorly understood dyscalculia is. It’s around 6% in the Caucasian population, which pretty much guarantees one kid has it in every classroom. And yet, there’s very little good info on what actually works when teaching affected kids (source: my daughter has it), especially compared to the enormous well oiled machine that swings into action when a kid is diagnosed with dyslexia. I get that dyslexia is worse because you have to be able to read to learn anything, but it’s frustrating.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> It’s around 6% in the Caucasian population, which pretty much guarantees one kid has it in every classroom. That wouldn't be true even if children were randomly assigned to classrooms. > I get that dyslexia is worse because you have to be able to read to learn anything That... also doesn't come close to being true.
- Izkata 3y ago6% is about 1 in 17. Classrooms where I grew up had 20-30 kids.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoSo under the assumption that children are randomly assigned to classrooms, 70% of 20-kid classrooms will have at least one student drawn from the 6% pool, and 30% won't. That's a "guarantee"?
- Izkata 3y agoThey said "pretty much guarantees". With those numbers, yes, that idiom is pretty much accurate. It's not the same thing as "guarantees" alone.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoWith those numbers, yes, that idiom is pretty much accurate. About as accurate as saying that "if you see two children, it's pretty much guaranteed that they're not both girls". That's not something that anyone would accept as accurate.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sings 3y agoThe separate page on punctuation is interesting. They recommend against using curly apostrophes, although they do not give a rationale for this choice. That page doesn’t follow its own advice. It recommends against contracting “you have”, but goes on to do so later in the page. Contradictions are always a bit funny on a style guide because of the imperative voice.
- angrymouse 3y agoIm sure the team would welcome issues and pull requests on GitHub
- LoganDark 3y agoHow can a pull request divine the original rationale for something being there? Only the person who put it there can clarify.
- LoganDark 3y agoI legitimately don't understand how this is a controversial take. Am I just supposed to guess why it was put there? Is it normal to tell other people to open pull requests to explain why you did something? Seriously, how are they supposed to know?
- ggm 3y agoI've always disliked 100% more being twice as much. And I hate 7000% being seven times as much. Gone up 100% vs now 200% bigger.. way confusing. "It's double" Spurious use of % is Hard. Fractions can be more comprehensible than decimals half as big vs 0.5 can you really be confident 0.00125 is a meaningful value applied to 2mm? Its less than 1% bigger.. approximations are useful. I bet more people know what a right angle is than know its 90° or the equivalent in radians
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Nevermark 3y agoIt comes down to two ways to measure change: absolute (additive) difference and relative (multiplicative) difference. Additive: “The price went up 200%” New price = 100% + 200% = 300% (1.00 + 2.00 = 3.00) Multiplicative: “The price is 300% of the original” New price = 100% x 300% = 300% (1.00 x 3.00 = 3.00)
- sandpaper26 3y agoInteresting note about using "to" for ranges. I see things like "between 15-20" or "from 15-20" all the time at work, and it's never clear whether 20 is included in that range. Is "from 15 to 20" more clear, without context on any of these? Or is it always context dependent? How about "between 15 and 20"?
- whatshisface 3y agoFor some reason "between 15 and 20" sounds like it could include 16 and 19 but not 15 and 20.
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoI think we can presume the reason that between usually refers the space between things, less the things. “The ATM is in the lobby between the elevators and the restaurant” probably mean the ATM in the restaurant.
- whatshisface 3y agoActually that sounds like the ATM in the lobby.
- thwarted 3y agoThe ATM is in the lobby between the elevators and the restaurant” probably mean the ATM in the restaurant. This starts with "The ATM is in the lobby", so there's no reason to think it's in the restaurant. The "between the elevators and the restaurant" gives you a clue that if you go to the lobby and see either the elevators or the restaurant, but not both, keep going until you see the other one and once you do see the other one, you've passed where the ATM is. This is kind of a bad example for if between means a closed or open interval, however, since neither the elevators nor the restaurant are non-occupying boundaries, but rather places that could be occupied by an ATM. However, if the ATM is found at the elevators or in the restaurant, you wouldn't describe the location of the ATM relative to both of these, you'd describe the location as at/inside one of them. You might say, though, that the ATM is at the elevators, (with the elevators being) {near,after,before} the restaurant, to explain where the elevators are.