Is the word order in the quantity correct in the following sentence?
The boy is 3 years and a half old.
If not what would be the right way to say it?
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2At least we're adding a half...not dividing by half. that's where it gets all wahoonie-shaped. – JeffSahol Aug 26 '11 at 23:27
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1@simchona I think that brilliant could be influenced from his first language; I think it's difficult for him to explain where he has doubts. For example, in Italian I would say 3 anni e mezzo, which literally is "3 years and a half"; if I were not sure how to translate it from Italian to English, I think I could have problems in explaining which part confuses me. – apaderno Aug 26 '11 at 23:42
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2Which means that prior to asking a question I was supposed to learn a whole lot of other things, precisely, how to formulate my question so as to make it understood for a native speaker :) It's like a vicious circle: (step 1) if you have a problem in English, go ahead and ask it here, but be sure you do it correctly in English. (step 2) If you don't know how to describe your question in English correctly, go to step 1 :) – brilliant Aug 27 '11 at 00:14
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You could ask a question about how asking a question, but first you should ask a question about how asking a question that is about asking a question. Before that, you could ask a question about how asking a question that is about asking a question that is about asking a question about asking a question; to start, you could ask a question […]. – apaderno Aug 27 '11 at 02:15
2 Answers
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Number quantities in English should be written with the number before the thing being counted. That is,
There are [quantity][type of quantity]
For example, the following are correct:
He is [three][years old]
He is [three and a half][years old]
This also works with other quantities, like weight or mass:
I have [5 and a quarter][pounds of apples]
I have [5][dollars] and [42][cents]
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3This may be the best answer I've ever seen. It explains the English rule, the intuition behind it, and gives more than enough examples both in its simple case and in more complicated cases. Simchona <3 – Jeremy Aug 27 '11 at 03:47
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1@simchona - Thanks for editing the title of my question, but... don't you think that "How should I write this number quantity?" is a bit too general? I mean, if anyone else wanted to ask this question (about "three and a half years old") and before asking it tried to look through the database of question to see if his question had already been asked, if he stumbled upon "How should I write this number quantity?", most likely he would think that that question was not about reporting someone's age. – brilliant Aug 27 '11 at 14:42
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@brilliant: I edited the question in the hopes that more people will be able to find your question, because other people may have similar questions. I'll edit it, though, so that it reflects more of whats in this thread – Aug 27 '11 at 20:27
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@simchona - (1) "I edited the question in the hopes that more people will be able to find your question" - It seems that we are arriving at the old problem here on the stack. I don't want to sound too negative here, but I know for sure that, as a non-native English speaker, if I wanted to find the question that I have asked here I would definitely be looking for something like "how to report someone's age correctly" or "how old is a child who is already not 5 years old, but not 6 yet". I would be looking for such words as "age", "years" and "old", and I would ignore such – brilliant Aug 28 '11 at 00:40
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@simchona - (2) ones as "number" and "quantity", which sound to me as too scientific and not relevant to my particular question. Perhaps, a native English speaker would do otherwise, but I am not a native speaker. It's not the first time I've stumbled upon this problem here. On one hand, people here (like you) really want to help non-native speakers to solve their problems in English, but, on the other hand, non-native speakers are always expected to act here as if they were native. – brilliant Aug 28 '11 at 00:43
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@brilliant: Someone else may decide that the name of the question isn't applicable. However, because this answer could be applied in different situations I want to stay away from very specific questions. The duplicate merging process will help people find this question even if they didn't find it before they asked – Aug 28 '11 at 00:47
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@simchona - (1) "because this answer could be applied in different situations I want..." - Allow me to question this statement a bit. I agree it could apply in many situations, but each situation has its own specifics, so to say. Look, in your answer you said "Number quantities in English should be written with the number before the thing being counted", but that's not the case when, for example, you are reporting some period of time in hours: "I'll be there in 2 hours and a half". As you can see, "and a half" here does not precede the word "hours", however, it is absolutely correct to – brilliant Aug 28 '11 at 00:59
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@simchona - (2) say so in English. In fact, this case with "hours and a half" was exactly what confused me as I began to think that "3 years old and a half" must also be correct then, but something just didn't sit right in me about it, so I came here and asked this question. – brilliant Aug 28 '11 at 00:59
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@simchona - Really? But I hear native speakers say so all the time. I think it's worth another question here on stack. – brilliant Aug 28 '11 at 01:02
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@brilliant I've never heard it; I could be wrong. That being said, I have run the title of this question by several other users and this is what we came up with together. If someone else in the future asks the same question, they can find it by searching. If they still open up another question, we can direct them to this. – Aug 28 '11 at 01:04
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@simchona - I am really curious now about whether "2 hours and a half" correct or wrong. Because I definitely heard that from native speakers a lot. I want to ask this question her on stack now. But how can I ask this question now? Will it not be blocked right away as a possible duplicate of this current one? – brilliant Aug 28 '11 at 01:07
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1I agree with the answer. One archaic exception that proves the rule is "four score years and ten". Reminds me of: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/18966/where-did-the-odd-in-n-odd-years-come-from/18971#18971 – Hugo Aug 31 '11 at 07:38
