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Bookmark or Share- What is the proper hyphenation of "# and a half year old" in the ...I'm trying to write "3 and a half year old," as in, "He is a 3 and a half year old dog". I know a hyphen or two is supposed to go in there somewhere. Per Ways to write "2000 year old", I suspect it should be "3-and-a-half-year-old", but that reads like death-by-hyphen, even if it is correct.
- What does the phrase "half seven" mean? - English Language & Usage ...Americans say "half past seven". I've never heard anyone say "half before seven" nor have I heard an American say "half seven". It does lead to odd situations. My German wife has a very good English friend. She learned the difference between "half seven" and "halbsieben" when they both showed up on time yet an hour apart.
- style - What is the correct way to write a fractional number in a ...Even the Yahoo! style guide requires you write one-quarter, although it (interestingly) absolutely refuses to provide a ruling on how to write out numbers like "1 1/2". But in dialog or quoted speech, such as "five and a half" - none of these references offer guidance. –
- Which is it: "1½ years old" or "1½ year old"? [duplicate]It would come much more naturally to a native speaker to say not "That man is a 50-year-old" [note also the hyphenation here] but "That is a 50-year-old man"; similarly, not "That kid is a one-and-a-half-year-old today" [a construction I have never heard anyone use when referring to half years as part of someone's age], but "That is a one-and-a-half-year-old kid" (omitting the 'today'), or ...
- etymology - Why “half past” and not “half to”? - English Language ...There is also a more direct risk of confusion. In British English, at least, half followed by an hour is used by some to mean half past [hour]. It's perhaps worth adding that in German, by contrast, half followed by an hour does mean 30 minutes before the hour named. Halb eins is not 'half past one', but 'half past twelve'. So there's no ...
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