In your example tho, you want those numbers to stand out. The reason the affair was busy, was because of the numbers. You want the numbers to jump out, because that’s the important detail.
Comment on Literally Nineteen Eighty-Four
tiramichu@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Context is everything, IMO.
In engineering work numbers should always be digits. In prose numbers should be spelled out.
Breakfast at the Thompson’s was a busy affair; twelve eggs and six rounds of toast for their three sets of boistrous twins.
Breakfast at the Thompson’s was a busy affair; 12 eggs and 6 rounds of toast for their 3 sets of boistrous twins.
To me it’s pretty clear which of those reads better and more naturally as prose; digits really ‘jump out’ on the page, and while that is great for engineering texts, it is incongruent and distracting for prose.
Sc00ter@lemm.ee 2 days ago
tiramichu@lemm.ee 2 days ago
I appreciate your point, but here’s why I don’t agree with it.
In fiction writing, the ideal case is that the words themselves slide neatly out of the way and become invisible, leaving only a picture in the reader’s mind. Generally speaking, anything distracting is thefefore counter-productive for fiction. Strange fonts and strange typesetting, while interesting, take the reader out of the prose. There’s a reason almost every fiction book you pick up from the shelf uses Garamond.
In an engineering context, remembering “12 eggs, 6 toast” is probably the most important thing, and numeric digits assist in that. In fiction however it doesn’t matter if, by the next page, the reader has forgotten exactly how many eggs there were; the important aspect is to convey the sense of a large and chaotic family, and the impression is more important than the detail.
Thats why although the numbers are important for setting the scene, we really don’t want them to jump out. We don’t want anything at all to have undue prominence, because the reader needs to process the paragraph as a cohesive whole, and remember the scene not the numbers.
MisterFrog@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah that’s fair. I personally prefer the first one, but I can see how it makes sense to not use digits there.
+1 ∆ for you (change my view points, a thing from r/changemyview)
hglman@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
yeah the first, we don’t need letters when we have numbers
lengau@midwest.social 2 days ago
Somewhat relevant to your example, recipes should have numbers in digits too. (But then again recipes are basically an engineering text.)
exasperation@lemm.ee 2 days ago
I would love to see more systematic recipe formats.
Around 15-20 years ago there was a website called “Cooking for Engineers” that used a table format for recipes that was pretty clever, and a very useful diagram for how to visualize the steps (at least for someone like me). I don’t think he ever updated the site to be mobile friendly but you can see it here:
Cheesecake
Dirty Rice
He describes the recipe in a descriptive way, but down at the bottom it lists ingredients and how they go together in a chart that shows what amounts to use, what ingredients go into a particular step, what that step is, and how the product of that step feeds into the next step.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oh damn that’s a sensical format. I love it and may put my recipes in it once I start writing them properly
barsoap@lemm.ee 2 days ago
What kind of insanity is this a pound is 500g.
Your cups weigh 195g? Reasonable for stoneware, I guess. But why are you telling me and what does it have to do with the mass of rice?
tiramichu@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Cooking is just applied chemistry, after all.
msage@programming.dev 1 day ago
I’ve seen Breaking Bad, yes