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Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

(www.newyorker.com)
353 points dmazin | 4 comments | 09 Jul 25 12:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.004s | source
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pzo ◴[10 Jul 25 07:21 UTC] No.44518252[source]▶
good article I just don't know why author prefer to spell all numbers using words rather than digits. It's very mentally taxing for me to read, e.g:

>> of twenty-one thousand respondents in twenty-one countries, found that sixty-eight per cent favored solar energy, “five times more [...]

could be just:

>> of 21,000 responders in 21 countries, found that 68% favored solar energy, "5x more [...]

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1. happyraul ◴[10 Jul 25 08:39 UTC] No.44518737[source]▶
That's simply good writing practice. I find it more taxing to read digits than prose.
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2. sojournerc ◴[10 Jul 25 12:00 UTC] No.44520007[source]▶
I was taught numbers up to ten should be spelled, the rest use digits
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3. otikik ◴[10 Jul 25 12:40 UTC] No.44520331[source]▶
Thank you. To me after reading the parent comment the numbers option was so evidently better that I didn't even consider that someone like you could exist. My conception of humanity has been slightly enlarged.

If I may ask: Do you also find numbers more difficult to parse when doing math pure math operations? Is this:

Two hundred thirty five plus one thousand eight hundred twenty two

Also easier for you to parse than this?

235 + 1822

Or do you have two "parsing modes" ("text" and "math"), and going from one to the other is the difficult part?

4. mrspuratic ◴[10 Jul 25 14:43 UTC] No.44521658[source]▶
Chicago Manual of Style (though it says 1 to 100, er, I mean one to one-hundred). I try to use a CMOS subset for my professional/technical writing, mostly for consistency, but, partly so that I don't need to argue with people with subjective opinions about how I'm writing it wrong.