Mumsnet Talk

People on mumsnet like to day things like "My son is 2.7 years old."
Are they being incredibly precise and have worked out that their child is 2 years and 256 days, which happens to be 0.7 of a year? Or do they mean 2 years and 7 months and they have no understanding of what a decimal point is? This REALLY annoys me.

Phew. It felt good to finally say it.

Oooh I'm a newbie and I've been wondering this. I say 23 months or nearly 2. Writing 1.11 would just be wrong!

I spent a long time wondering this a few years ago but realsed - after a while - that life was too short.

Then I 'made a decision' that they meant 2 y 7m and didn't worry about it again (though every so often, I see it and do a mental double take).

FWIW, I suspect most don't do decimals. Watch out though, as I'm sure there are some that do, and if you get it wrong......

I don't like it either but as it seems to be the standard way of expressing age on here I finally gave in today and used it for the first time while tutting at myself under my breath

But then I also work somewhere where people use 17.7inches and the like. That really does make me itch.

calm down and lighten up a bit. I have plenty of advanced qualifications demonstrating that I am fully able to understand the proper use of the decimal point. However, this is just an online forum and most of us only have a few mins snatched from when we are supposed to be doing something more productive to write our posts so we have developed useful abbreviations. We know that 99% of the people who read what we type will know that when we write "3.7yo DS" we are referred to a darling son who is 3 years and 7 months old - it's an accepted shorthand and scientific accuracy isn't particularly important in this context. I would probably be happy to use the shorthand at 3.10yo but would agree that 3.11 might look a bit odd so would be more likely to write "nearly 4" for those 30 days.

They are using the decimal point to denote "and some fraction", in the same way that people write 2.30 for a time - it isn't two hours and 0.3 of an hour, we all know what it means. In the case of time, it's a convention that you mean "and x 60ths" after what looks just like a decimal poin. On here it's a cnvention that it means "and x months".

Just one of the lovely ways in which language adapts

I have wondered this before. But if you say it's 10.33 you mean it's 33 minutes past 10 not 10 and a third. So I think of it like that (however I do try to advise using it in threads).

Surely it takes almost no longer (and is considerably more accurate) to type 2y4m than 2.4 though?

Ah well I expect I'll get used to it (and the obligatory D's) soon!

Feel free to type 2y4m if you wish, no-one will moan or correct you. It's just that 2.4 would be understood to mean the same in a mumsnet context.
I promise that if I were writing an academic paper on some scientific subject requiring reference to the age of a small child I would use a different notation.

What if someone says 2.5 years? What do they mean?

I'm thinking a metric calendar and a metric clock would be easier for me to deal with. Now just need too change the gravitational pull off the sun etc...

If it's used in the context of 2y7m, it is not a decimal point, it is a* radix point and is correct notation. To be accurate it is a base-12 radix point; would that be called a dodecimal point?

*Or, another type of

This is used by health professionals, not just on Mumsnet.

Perhaps you need to get out more?

Fair point Sanity!

Re: time, I always thought it was a : not a .

So 2:30, not 2.30

Meaning 30 minutes past two?

Rather than a decimal point......

I use 1.1 to mean DD is one year and one month old. I don't think of it as a decimal point, more as an implied indication of "years and months".

And I would much rather see someone refer to their son as 3.3 than 39 months which I do think is a bit wankerish.

Sanity I've never seen it prior to MN and am a HCP (though not in paeds)

I used it a lot in my BA in Early Years, it is the current shorthand way childcare professionals denote child ages, certainly in all the literature I read for the course.

Fair enough

Fair enough

InMySpareTime meant to ask, in thqt usage does it go up to 2.11?

This used to annoy me when I first joined MN, but have taken to using it jut for ease.

just^

this one goes to eleven...

It's no different from using the notation DC, DD, DS or DH, IMO (oh, there's another one), or writing 37+5 to refer to stage of pregnancy (are you going to start another thread to the effect of "Are they '43 pregnant' or do they have no understanding of what a plus sign means?"?). You wouldn't do it in normal speech or writing, but it's fine on the Internet.

(or in technical publications)