Pedants United

[Reg Clucas]

which should be,

"More than one in five children in England is frequently missing school

Not sure about this one - if there are more than one, then it isn't singular?!?

[NickFaulks]

Not sure about this one - if there are more than one, then it isn't singular?!?

I have never liked this usage at all. Is 1.13 of them singular, plural or just meaningless?

I prefer "more than one fifth of all children" and consider that to be obviously plural despite the word "one".

[Kevin Thurlow]

Yes, that gets round the problem. "One in a million people is..." does sound odd, even though it is technically right.

The "regular" absence of the children could be because they always take Friday off I guess.

[Ian Thompson]

Whilst the author's intention is pretty obvious, what does this statement really mean - "[the new product] is twice as thin [as the old product]"?

The old product was 46.2 mm thick, so, to me, that statement means the new product is 92.4 mm thick.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Half as thin would be better (half as thick also works).

[NickFaulks]

Half as thin would be better (half as thick also works).

No!! Half as thin can only mean less thin, ie thicker.

In circumstances where being thin was a bad thing, that would be obvious.

[Matt Mackenzie]

This is interesting since I instinctively assume "half as thin" to mean the opposite - even though your interpretation is indeed logically correct.

Though as mentioned by Chris, "half as thick" is actually correct.

[Tim Spanton]

Whilst the author's intention is pretty obvious, what does this statement really mean - "[the new product] is twice as thin [as the old product]"?

The old product was 46.2 mm thick, so, to me, that statement means the new product is 92.4 mm thick.

Surely it depends on the context?

If the old product, at 46.2mm, was being compared, directly or indirectly, with similar products that, for the sake of argument, had an average thickness of 65mm, then the old product was thin in comparison with them, and, if it now measures 23.1mm, it is indeed "twice as thin" as it was before.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

You can say "double the thickness" but it does feel wrong to say "double the thinness". Also, you have "thickset" but not (as far as I can tell) "thinset" or "thin-set" (yes, apparently thinset is a type of mortar).

[Pete Morriss]

Isn't the problem here that 'thick' can be measured quantitatively, but 'thin' cannot, despite seeming to be its opposite? Similarly long/short and tall/short - a person can be said to be six foot tall, but not to be four foot short. Hence 'twice as thin' is just meaningless, a category mistake, whilst 'half as thick' probably would convey the intended meaning.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I agree with Pete's analysis above. There are other similar pairing of seeming opposites that can't be used gramatically in quite the same way. I think "old" and "young" might be another. The phrase "half as old" is relatively common in usage (compare with the formulation "twice as old"), but you would not say "half as young" or "twice as young". There is probably somewhere a technical term for all this.

Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
a rose-red city half as old as time.

John William Burgon (1813-1888) was the author of the poem, Petra (1845), that ends in the above famous couplet. It is less romantic language than it sounds as he was being very literal, using the accepted biblical age of the world as dating from 4004 BC. But I've always wanted to quote it!

[Pete Morriss]

To be slightly more technical, 'thick' can be measured cardinally, but 'thin' only ordinally: whilst the new product (in the original example) is indeed thinner than the old one, it cannot be twice as thin, though it can be half as thick. Old/young have the same difference. This presumably is a consequence of the logic of these quantities, in that there is a zero-point to measure away from for thick/tall/old but not for their quasi-opposites thin/short/young. Unfortunately I can't think of a couplet that expresses this - and I hadn't been aware of the intended literal reading of 'half as old as time', so thanks for that.

[David Williams]

I see the temperature only got to 13C in Edinburgh today, but as high as 26C in London. Rather illustrates the point that you have to be using a linear scale with a zero start-point for 'twice' to have any sensible meaning.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Oh, you just know people would say it is "twice as hot", or that the temperature has "doubled"... (technically, the latter may be correct).

[Andy McCulloch]

Really, technically correct? As stated in the previous post, you must use the Kelvin scale. On this scale the temperature has increased from 286K to 293K. Hardly double.