> spans pages 128–34.
Who omits the 1 from the second number?! That is aweful!
replies(3):
Who omits the 1 from the second number?! That is aweful!
You write pages 1,003–4, instead of typing out 1,003–1,004 which is just unnecessary.
Works the same with two digits, or even three: pp. 1,899–902.
This is standard practice and arguably clearer.
I've only ever seen it done with page ranges, though. I'm not sure if it's done with year ranges? E.g. 1984–5? Or 1989–92? You work with page ranges constantly in academia, I just don't see year ranges much in any form.
In speech, it's common, and misunderstandings are usually not a problem (if you're not monologuing on a recording) because someone will just ask; but in writing it looks like the range is the wrong way around. Maybe I expect more care in writing because the feedback loop is longer, or maybe it's just habit and I think it's wrong in writing because I never see it?
Quick, tell me how wide this range is, just as an order of magnitude:
285368737954–285368783645
Would be a lot easier if I only included the range at the end which had actually changed, wouldn't it?
That's why it's clearer. Now obviously that was an extreme example, but it's also easier to see at a glance that 1,387–9 is just three pages, as opposed to 1,387–1,389.
Genuinely trying to think of an examples, since e.g. books aren't ever that long and search results don't have that many pages (that you'd all read and refer back to). A salary range, perhaps, can get into the seven digits in extreme cases (not that you care about any individual digit when you make a lifetime's worth of money in a bit more than a year): "Prospective salary is 2'423'000 to 2'432'000" seems to convey the relevant info as well as "Prospective salary is 2'423'000 to 9'000" does (except that I wouldn't understand the latter and ask what this second number means, but that's plausibly attributable to me as an individual not being used to it)