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Subject:From, Between, and other pesky words... From:rhoggan -at- lewis -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 4 Apr 2002 18:10:22 -0600
Nuzhath,
This only halfway applies to your question, since it appears as if you are
seeking advice on mathematical language (in which case, many words have
specific meanings outside of normal English use).
In college I had a linguistics class that was taught from an ESL viewpoint.
One of the most important things I learned in the class is prepositions,
more than any other class of words, will most likely be misinterpreted by
individuals. A primary factor for misinterpretation is regional dialects.
For example, I still don't know what "a quarter of five" means in reference
to time. Is it 5:15 or 4:45? Until I took that class, I had no idea that "a
quarter of five" is valid English.
Generally, you have to put more words in the sentence to make sure there is
no ambiguity. It isn't always pretty. I prefer being vague about those
situations (we have from/to from/through arguments here about every six
months).
If you are dealing with life and death material (such as nuclear weapons)
or cost reports, you may opt for the details in your documentation (Unless
of course, you are Enron).
Nuzhath Shereen wrote:
> Hello,
>
> To describe a range of values:
> When should we use "from" and when should we use "between"? In both
cases,
> are the start and end numbers included?
>
> for example: What is the difference between the foll? (or can we use
these
> interchangeably?)
>
> The valid values are 0 to 5
> The valid values are from 0 to 5 (no ambiguity here)
> The valid values are between 0 and 5 (does this include 0 and 5)?
> The valid range is 0 to 5?
>
> Guess what I really want to know is the general way to describe fields
that
> can take values from a range of numbers (version number, log level,
severity
> level etc.,)
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