Blog News

1. Comments are still disabled though I am thinking of enabling them again.

2. There are now several extra pages - Poetry Index, Travel, Education, Childish Things - accessible at the top of the page. They index entires before October 2013.

3. I will, in the next few weeks, be adding new pages with other indexes.

Sunday, 25 October 2009

And how many is that exactly?

The sign at the rapid checkout in my local supermarket reads "about twenty items or less". As I waited in the queue I started to wonder exactly how many that is. It isn't the use of "less" that I object to, though I know some who might. I'm just wondering about that "about".

To me "about twenty" might be eighteen, it might be twenty two. Others might disagree with the specifics but I think most would agree that it includes a few above and a few below twenty.

It doesn't combine well with "less" though as I'd take that to mean 1-20 but not 21 or 22.

How would others interpret this unusual phrasing?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Over there they do allow a max of ten products and start to arguee if one has even one more...
A wonderful new week for you.