American English? Or Please Confirm That This Guy Has Lost The Plot

Sorry, that's just another American idiom.

2ex is a common form for 2 times.

He is not all mouth and trousers. So, from a Yank across the pond I can only tell you that we are not berks and things have not gone pear shaped, nor is the world shambolic, so grasp the nettle instead of flogging that dead horse. You sound like this is a sticky wicket. :-)

I disagree with AH. Saying 'X' instead of 'times' is rare. Most people (even most marketing types who somehow become the head of R&D) say 'times'. Yes. It sounds stupid to me.

This really is common slang here in the states, and used that way by engineers. In my 40 years experience, "X" is used far more then 'times' both in hallway talk, and presentations.

I'm always 'bugged' by the usage of the vowel "O" used in place of the 'zero' when stating numbers. There's no fixing this.

Odd. My experience (35 yrs +) is just the opposite. I guess I must associate with a higher class of engineers.

It must be a Midwest thing then.

Well it's a SouthEast thing as well.

It's not a Chicago thing.

2X is 'two times,' unless you're talking about a telescope, microscope or binoculars, where 2x is 'two power,' or you're talking about lumber or equivalent, where 2X is 'two by,' And that's only when you're talking about a 'class' of boards (2X4, 2X6, 2X8, 2X10) as a single unit: "You can't use one by's for stair treads, you need at least two by's."

The only time you run into 2X being 'two ex,' outside of description of a mathematical formula, is when you're talking about CD/DVD drives, where they'll refer to 2X as 'two ex,' 'two speed,' 'two times,' or 'damned slow,' since the CHEAP, 'baseline' CD burners run at around 10X read/8X write. When you've got a kid at the computer store calling a drive '2X' without any indication that he knows that refers to data speed, it's a sign that you should scale back your Build-Your-Own-Computer purchase to just the case for today, and hopefully you'll find a more knowledgeable employee on your next trip.

I'm with you and Randall! I think I may have heard "two ex" when referring to a scale or enlargement factor of a drawing, but I don't remember having heard it used to mean "two times", as in two times as fast. What's wrong with "twice"?

almost all of my experience for the last 60 years has been in California, so it may well be a regional thing...

Ca. is the literate area in the USA ? God help us....

LOL and probably VERY TRUE!!

Ditto!

Our local, Australian Reading Writing Hotline, has "O"s and not "0"s in its telephone number in its' ad. Catchy tune but ironic.

You see a lot of products that use the X to express or imply the word times. From a marketing point it sounds good. But the legal department may have something to say about it. Can they prove it is two times better then it was before.

Better to say X then be called on it.

Is it also an American thing that the word "then" is so regularly used in lieu of "than" as you have done? I see it quite often in postings by U.S. persons.

This makes no sense: the first 'then' he used should have been 'than' and the second 'then' is appropriate. 'that' does not work in either sentence. But then again, or But that again, I have never been to Australia yet.

If anyone needs help there is a website (surely there is one for everything!) here:-

Than-and-Then

Examples for "Then"

1. Her dress is so much prettier then mine.

Test: Are you referring to time or a sequence of events?

No, you're making a comparison. (Incorrect!)

2. First, you add the flour; then, you add the eggs.

Test: Are you referring to time or to a sequence of events? Yes!(Correct!)

Examples for "Than"

1. I'll see you than.

Test: Are you making a comparison?

No, you're referring to time.(Incorrect!)

2. You've worked here much longer than I have.

Test: Are you making a comparison? Yes! (Correct!)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can find further exercises here:-

Sample-Grammar-Exercises

I hope this helps......

#48 first had the word "that" instead of "than" that is why I posted what I did. It was edited after my post, so now my post makes no sense whatsoever.

You're right, I did type "that" and then edited it to "than". I am out in the sticks at present and internet access, while being pathetic at best in Australia anywhere outside a major city, is almost non existent where I am now. I attempted to edit immediately after posting but access became impossible. I have only just been able to get service again after a couple of days, and I'm only 60 kilometers from a large centre with a cell tower. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I certainly hope not!. Here in California, the two words are pronounced quite distinctly, and there is no reason to mistake one for the other. I believe that many people in "The South" (southern US, well east of the Rockies) speak a dialect where the two words are pronounced such that there is much less of a distinction between them. Less distinction in speech could logically lead to less distinction in writing.

I thought about attempting to produce phonetic spellings of what I think I've heard, but I decided that could be interpreted as racist or derogatory, so I won't. It really is amazing how many ways words can be pronounced. Of course each of us thinks our way is the right way...

I'm such a terrible typist, that I have to review everything I write, so I catch most of my many mistakes. Of course a spell checker doesn't check for context, so it can't tell which one is correct in a given instance, so I can understand how better typists might depend on the spellchecker, and thereby miss more.

In any case, whenever I see mistakes of the (then/than, to/too/two) type, it immediately lowers my estimate of the intelligence and credibility of the writer.

*"Valley girl is a stereotype depicting a socio-economic class of women characterized by the colloquial California English dialect Valleyspeak and vapid materialism. The term originally referred to an ever increasing swell of semi-affluent and affluent middle-class and upper-middle class girls living in the early 1980s Los Angeles commuter towns of the San Fernando Valley."

*From Wikipedia.

Good point! I should have pointed out that I'll soon be entering my 4th quarter century, and I have very little contact with young Californians, ...or young people from anywhere else! So my opinions and preferences are probably NOT typical of California, ...or anywhere else!

In any case, whenever I see mistakes of the (then/than, to/too/two) type, it immediately lowers my estimate of the intelligence and credibility of the writer.

Have to agree wholeheartedly.....we don't "talk" to each other on CR4, we only have the badly written word(s) to judge our colleagues here with.....

About as good as advertising "4G LTE" the dumbest one I've ever seen!

U R 2 kritikul.

It's just another form of text speak.

X is easier to type than times.

England and America are two countries separated by a common language.

George Bernard Shaw

Easy to type: I agree, but, how would you say it?

Thanks to everyone for their replies.

I'm fairly certain that quote is incorrectly (though quite commonly) attributed to George Bernard Shaw. I don't think it appears anywhere in his writings.

It does sound similar to something Oscar Wilde wrote about England and America having everything in common except the language.

A Rose by any other name.

Does it really matter? The sentiment is still the same.

Below from two different sources:

England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
George Bernard Shaw
Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 - 1950)

What is the origin of the phrase "two nations divided by a common language"?

I have seen it attributed to Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and even Winston Churchill.

The most likely looking source I found said:

'Was it Wilde or Shaw?' The answer appears to be: both. In The Canterville Ghost (1887), Wilde wrote: 'We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language'. However, the 1951 Treasury of Humorous Quotations (Esar & Bentley) quotes Shaw as saying: 'England and America are two countries separated by the same language', but without giving a source. The quote had earlier been attributed to Shaw in Reader's Digest (November 1942).

I like that you give credit where due.

In the grand scheme and over long time scales, it matters very little. In 10,000 years or less, either no one will remember the mistake, or the mistake will be misattributed to someone else....probably Kramarat.

Either way, you are in the clear.

To paraphrase George W. Bush, the master butcherer of the language, never misunderestimate kram.

He may be putting subliminal messages on his Yard Kards.

Will this be the update to the Retro-Proto-Turbo-Encabulator that we have all been waiting for?

I was just in a meeting and heard a senior VP say "two ex."

I'll admit I never really thought about it before! I think I say "two times."

Others and myself prefer to use "*" instead of "x". The "x" as in multiple is often mistaken for the letter "x". This is the same reason many engineers and myself will put a horizontal -- thru the letter Z, so it won't be mistaken for the number "2". Often times avoids mistakes especially in math. Maybe it is just the old ones who remember Fortran 2, Fortran 4, Basic, the IBM 1130 and the 1800 that insist on it this way! Good Luck, Old Salt

Z with a line through it....I like that.

Over here we cross our sevens. I first thought it was odd but now do it myself so I can read my own writing!

using * to denote multiplication....got that habit programming, and the zero with a line through it too so as not mix it with alpha o.

But saying "ex" when reading notes....that is just dumb.

I would judge a person poorly if they said "ex" instead of times.

How would they say this if they read it aloud:

"2*...."?

Muppets.

As a child of the 80's it took a lot of practice for be to quit 'slashing' my zeros so they would not be mistaken as capital Os. When writing down a complex letter/number sequence, I WILL 'center-dot' my zeroes for clarity. (I'm sure almost everyone here remembers the old 7x8 pixel fonts from back them. And that would be read as 'seven by eight,' to bring this post marginally back on topic.)

I never heard of using a center dot to identify zeros. I still cross my Zees though. Then there were the people who thought a capital sigma was a sideways M!

Well it does mean "More".

That is until the iteration changes sign.

In other words, it means 'more' sum of the time.

Lehman57-

My father, the guy from Minerva, was an Elect. Eng. and pretty smart. He used to B.S. with another guy in Latin but Numbers were his real game and pleasure. Your mentioning of sigma being a sideways M is noteworthy in our family. For several years of my adolescence we built a sailboat from scratch but quality was in excess of custom made boats. Since this required a lot of time, sweat, thinking, and creativity we named the boat "Sigma" since it was the sum of all our diverse work and efforts on the project. Every time I hear or use the term "Sigma" it brings back good memories of that excellent learning experience.

The boat was so well built that I still have it today and continue to sail it. Pretty good for a boat 55 years old! Its too big for the Big Sandy or the Little Sandy. Not bad for a home town guy from Minerva!

Good Luck, Old Salt

What about 7?

Or a little more subtle, serif-ing 5 by lifting the pen after the second straight leg, then starting the curve as a new motion. The lines still touch, but it usually forms a little serif at that corner that makes fives more distinct from S than a single motion 5 is.

.

And typing this back to the discussion....I don't even think the machines are minding the words today. For example, it seems not to matter what impromptu pseudonym I write or how absurd the motion I use to sign for credit card purchase. It approves the transaction.

If even the machine is not interested it what I write, why write at all? So, I just sketch in the pad now.

"For example, it seems not to matter what impromptu pseudonym I write or how absurd the motion I use to sign for credit card purchase. It approves the transaction.

If even the machine is not interested it what I write, why write at all? So, I just sketch in the pad now."

The POS⁽¹⁾ machines NEVER cared about the signature, they were just capturing it as a graphic to attach to the receipt. The point being that if they have a 'signature,' they can use it in case of a dispute on the charge⁽²⁾. It's the way the credit card companies work: below a certain threshold no signature is required, because the sum is too small to worry about⁽³⁾, past that threshold, the CC company wants more and more 'proof' that the purchaser is the person authorized to use that account.

Notes:

1. Point Of Sale, although when they're not working right, that acronym can be expanded out into something else.
2. "Is this your signature electronically recorded by the Point Of Sale device? Then why are you claiming you did not make that purchase when there is clear and irrefutable proof that you did? You *WILL* pay that Credit card bill, sir, and all the late fees incurred by refusing to pay during this arbitration."
3. Because the cost to the consumer to dispute the charge exceeds the amount charged. You would 'win' only a symbolic victory, since you would have ended up with a net loss after the charge is reversed.
   

Due to curiosity, laziness and times when I have to sign many things I experimentally changed my signature temporarily. Instead of a signature with a hardly discernible name I began to scribble a line with certain characteristics included in it. Since the time I began doing this several years ago I have only received two comments. One was a store clerk who admired how quick it was and how it can be done from almost any position and way you grasp the pen. The second was from my wife. She said it was messy and couldn't be read. "Messy" I'm used to from her. The "couldn't be read" is consistent with my script writing.

From that experiment I changed my signature to the scribble line with certain characteristics in it. Many people now recognize it as mine and only mine. Life is so much easier.

In my area of this great US, $50.00 is the max that you don't have to sign for. This has increased the traffic through fast food outlets and the express check-outs in grocery stores.

Good Luck, Old Salt

The "Chip" has required signing for anything.

The stores that I purchase in at least, none of them has required a signature for a charge except when the transaction exceeds $50. Some of then such as mom and pop or low gross stores have no provision for handling anything but signature transaction so you must sign there even for a $1.29 purchase. The local large chain grocery store does not have any provision for signatures on less than $50, just as the gas stations don't.

Perhaps this is good and/or bad. Last year while on vacation 1,400 miles away there was a strange charge from my home town on the statement. I disputed it and won based on there were numerous charges from where I claimed to be and only the one back home, the questioned one.

I have found some, but very few, bank personnel just as unscrupulous as some cc personnel. Years ago one memorized the information of my cc card and got herself a free vacation to the Caribbean. From that time on when a bank or anyone else wants a second form of ID I never give them my cc. Some object angrily but I insist they have to take a legitimate origination's ID. There are plenty of other establishments who want my business. The bank teller got a real good familiarization with the county jail. This was the third time she had done the same thing in 1-1/2 months. How she got the job I will never know nor accept.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Good Luck, Old Salt

So anyone intending to dispute the payment should sign 'nul and void' or 'no agreement'? Hmm.

'Nul' or 'Void' might be decent middle names, if one were worried about their progeny falling into credit trouble in the future.

.

I was really just attempting to tie the comment back to the subject at hand. And now I feel 2x as frivolous for tying this one in arbitrarily as well.

Late 80's IBM fonts but a 'dot' in the middle of the zero, instead of doing the slash thing.

It's just how different companies did things to look unique, or to avoid paying royalties to someone else for font design.

Erm, yes, it does to me as well.

My brain is amphibious, I understand both versions.

I would just say it offers twice the performance....X is not a word...or I might say this new thing offers a 100% increase in performance...X= unknown....this sounds like some legalese deniability speak creeping into presentations....I would immediately ask for clarification, if for no other reason, to hear the xplanation....

2 X 0 is still 0

no, it's naught.

no, naught plus naught (two times naught) is double naught. I am a double naught spie, what are you?

I am a hart surgin.

Double naught wire is not twice the conductance of single naught but it is more.

2X₀ may or may not be 0...

2X⁰ is 2....

LOL!!

A good list of funny comments here, thanks to all concerned....

My take on this subject is really simple, what the British do with 2 x and what the Americans do with it are immaterial, as long as they all understand it.

EXCEPT FOR ONE THING!!!

I recently bought a T-Shirt from Amazon (you all ask what the F*** has this to do with the Blog!!), from Clothing Monster, with a huge picture of a Weimaraner on it. My size just happens to be 2XL.

No problem you might think, but it is HUGE!

See here:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NuC_E2IxEA&feature=em-hot-vrecs

My Wife instantly said "you could use it as a "Nachthemd" (Nightshirt to you maybe!)

It comes halfway down my thighs.......

Good quality and well made with a great picture I ought to add.

Well the problem is that US 2XL is probably a 3 or 4 XL in European sizes......

SO THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 2X IN THE USA AND 2X HERE IN EUROPE. THEREFORE IT IS MAYBE A GOOD IDEA TO USE THE TWO DIFFERENT METHODS TO SPEAK EACH ONE TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THEM!!

What do you Guys think?

(By the way, they have many such T-Shirts, even just looking through the huge range of animals and even mythical monsters is really worth 5 minutes of your time. I could not resist buying one!!!

Start here for T-Shirts for men, enjoy:-

clothingmonster t-shirts

The dog must be HUGE!

It is, the muzzle is seen here locally in 3-D even!!

(My stomach "projects" it well!!)

Did you have a look at the website? Its really worth a visit just to window shop!!

Looks like you have the dog thoroughly puzzled--wondering what are these people up to?

The mental picture of you standing there in 2XL (American) Weimaraner Nachthemd is somewhat disturbing, but your post is right on target.

If you had bought a cheaper Chinese T-shirt of "2XL", my wager is that it would have struck you somewhere above the navel - I do not even want to hazard a good guess of what they call that sort of shirt in Germany, or in what part of town to find those kind of girls. not really,

Here's to the yucks we have on here! Cheers! I will have to check the website out later.

I can only say that it is a beautiful T-Shirt, and even though its too big, I still wear it!!

Here are a few, but you need to look through yourself. Mine is the top one....

clothing_monster

I have to say the dog one is way cool! I would get one, but then my dog would be trying to mate with my leg.

Merry Xmas everyone!

X as in xmas is a denial of Christ in Christmas, usually used by atheists and those who see Christmas as a commercial endeavor and not a religious holiday.

but 2Xmas is twice the run of regular Xmas!! This whole thread is basically a silly waste of space and time, and momentum.

So what's wrong with that?

Good point..quite difficult to formulate a rational answer

Relax. He's just reading what someone else wrote for him, the same as newsreaders and politicians. ;)

Convenient Xplanation...

I agree.

But it also smells strongly of "Nepotism" too, don't yo agree?

Find out his contact details and aks him !

He'd be too busy ironing shirts and choosing a tie...

Well, sorry I haven't responded to all the posts: I have been quite busy.........

Oh!.. You mean him, not me: yes you're probably right.

Thanks for all the replies. I see that there is at least forward slashed divided opinion.

By the way here's the offending video.

Altera Stratix 10 Overview Video.

That was insteresting, thanks. (2ex)

OK. Now I've seen it and heard it, thankfully it was uttered early in the video, it was most probably an appropriate manner of describing, along with the visual aid, his product's capability to his intended audience.

So it depends on the context and the audience.

In this context he could have said "doubling" rather than the generic or literal "2 times".

As Wal indicated, there is a visual in the background that says "2X Performance". That changes the perspective somewhat. Since "2X Performance" is not defined and is open to possibly more than one interpretation (eg. twice the speed, twice the throughput, twice the capacity, etc.), using the same terms in his speech preserves the ambiguity, possibly for legal reasons.

Understood..like saying "She is twice as good"..very ambiguous indeed!

I've lived in the USA all 64-1/2 years of my life, and 2X to me means a clothing size one too large for me.

I agree, 2X, 3X, etc are shirt sizes. I never ran into "2 ex." Using "X" as "times" probably comes from learning our multiplication tables--anybody remember them? 2 X 3 = 6 and all the others. I also use the horizontal in the middle of Z, a habit started in college I think. Have certainly seen the 7 with the horizontal, but didn't develop the habit of doing it.

How about the (British I think?) method of putting the dot for multiplication in the middle of the line instead of at the bottom like a period. That is 2 ^. 3 = 6.

Let's not forget that there is also vector multiplication where the cross product (×) produces another vector and a dot product (•) produces a numerical scalar value.

Ah yes, vector multiplication, another reason Algebra uses the dot for multiplication. Dot multiplication ALWAYS returns a numerical value, no matter how advanced the algebra related math one is using.

Excellent!

With the PC's now, it is "*", so you'd think that would get put in for "times", but no, as you say it goes back to grade school days and the "X". Guess "asterisk" is too hard to say. I wonder if this really stems from texting. Everyone takes as many shortcuts as possible to get messages through, so "X" for times, and being in the shortcut frame of mind, are many thinking "X" for times as well?

Ever since college, and only one American raised prof in my 6 years of schooling, I also cross my Z's and I do 7's as well. Yes, I've used the dot as times - that also came from my college days. Can't get into the decimals from Europe though. 2,25 is 2-1/4. I see this quite often in German data sheets on instruments.

The comma as a decimal point was for me a pain in the butt over many years, after moving to Germany.

It is also used in the previous money (Deutschmark) and the Euro, DM44,50 and €22,25 for example. I am just about used to it nowadays and of course in simple written calculations either or both, is good.....Funnily enough, you NEVER see a calculator with a comma here! Even though you should never say never on CR4!

Its not OK to mix them though in PC Calc sheets and you need to format the columns in one or the other and stick to that format, or you get stupid errors (been there done that!), sometimes with no error message!! Libre Office is particularly unfriendly I have experienced. Whereby MS Excel is far better organised in my opinion...(I am FAR from being a "Calc" expert, even though I use it for almost everything for many years now.....)

For anyone with interest in more detail, they could do worse than starting here as its a far deeper subject than anyone here probably believes!!

Decimal_mark

"How about the (British I think?) method of putting the dot for multiplication in the middle of the line instead of at the bottom like a period. That is 2 ^. 3 = 6."

That's the Algebraic method of indicating multiplication, done because 2 ^. 3 = 6 while 2 x 3 = 2 ^. x ^. 3 = 6x

So many responses to a simple thing. The VP is obviously well "trained" to read the script exactly as written. Must have been serious and there was no room for adlibbing.

I've gone 0 the bend!

You mean o'er.

Or is it oar?

Shirley not ore!

It is clear to me that we are all old farts and unwilling to embrace new twists in the language arts.

Except for me, of course.

We all know what the meaning was, and if it had been written in a report, it would never have come up.

You wouldn't have even aks about it.

What countries besides Sweden use the symbol below for phase?

"Ø"

Well, the USA, for one! I commonly deal with 3Ø circuits.

I'm not aware of any other symbol for phase, at least at the moment...

Oz does.

I do here.

Any electrical engineer would understand it.

"P", a natural phonetic alternative normally means "pole".

You can have 3Ø,4P for example.

You never mentioned what the large u.s. company produces. Is it an adult movie company ? And is the " 2X a rating ?

See post #28

So this all about bandwidth, modulation, and faster better.

This brings up the term "Pair of pants or trousers"