4 ms·
Please add the measurement system to the title. The times should know better...
by verelo 14d ago
Please add the measurement system to the title. The times should know better...
- cr1895 14d agoThough it should be pretty obvious from this context that it's not 97 Celsius or Kelvin.
- verelo 14d agoSure, but 'F' is a lot shorter than "whichever unit doesn't kill the dinosaur."
- articulatepang 14d agoWeird, my browser somehow doesn’t render the title as “T. Rex Had a Body Temperature of 97 Degrees whichever unit doesn’t kill the dinosaur”. It just leaves that last part out, making it even shorter than “F”.
- verelo 14d ago"T. rex was warm" is even shorter again. I think we’ve established that omitting information saves space.
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- ray_v 14d agoUnless the Earth was a __VERY__ different place
- t-writescode 14d agoThe Times is a US magazine. The odds of them picking a US unit of measurement are very high.
- verelo 14d agoThe same newspaper uses Celsius in its climate reporting, including the article below. Apparently the units depend on which extinction we’re discussing. One extra letter would save the guesswork. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/climate/united-nations-climate-target-overshoot.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/climate/united-nations-cl... Edit: Removed the headline quotation because the search listing and article heading differ.
- t-writescode 14d agoThis makes sense from a context and writer perspective. Most conversation about climate change has been around global average temps raising in C. Further, switching that back and forth and doubling it for F would be seen as manipulative by people that don’t want to hear it. On the contrary, the Times’s US audience (probably their main audience) thinks of body temp, which this is, in F. To add further, the audience and writers that want to share cool, new dinosaur fact and the group that does an update on global warming are different people and operate and think differently around these specific things in these specific contexts. Of course it would be easier to add the letter, but I can definitely see why it wasn’t included.
- verelo 14d agoThat’s a reasonable explanation for choosing Fahrenheit. It’s also a pretty good explanation for choosing to label it, since the same paper uses both scales.
- t-writescode 14d agoIndeed. It also turns out, as someone else in this thread has noted, NYT's style guides say to not include the unit in headlines, so here we are :)
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- aduwah 14d agoI have asked ChatGPT to draw me an image of a 97 degree celsius t-rex and the result was absolutely amazing
- verelo 14d agoDon't hold out on us now...
- Hikikomori 14d agohttps://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0533/7369/8218/articles/1637211787_what_not_to_do_when_keto_13fcaaa3-c00e-42a9-b434-5ab40ce25e28.jpg?v=1748862689 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0533/7369/8218/articles/16...
- verelo 14d agohaha! OK good one.
- dhdjddhx 14d agoIt seems that this headline is following the guidelines of the times style guide: "In general, ordinary references to temperature do not specify the scale."
- verelo 14d agoWow is that actually their guideline?
- t-writescode 14d agoA random, spare letter wastes space and might have been A/B tested to have a higher click away rate.
- nkrisc 14d agoWell it’s definitely not 97 K, it’s definitely not 97 C, so it’s probably 97 F which would put it in the same general ballpark as nearly all terrestrial vertebrates.
- verelo 14d agoYou're right but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49746671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49746671
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]