Decimalisation of years

[Londonmrss]

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.

[Londonmrss]

For me, saying 35 + 4. about pregnancy length implies '35 weeks plus 4 days' so I can handle that. Saying 2.7 years implies '2 point 7 years' and I immediately, without even thinking about it, begin to try and work out what 0.7 of a year is.

It is obviously a personal taste thing in that case. Some of you have given legitimate and rational arguments as to why it is not in fact incorrect, but frankly I still find it annoying.

It's like when I get my baby weighed and they tell me she is 6kg, but then someone asks me what that is in lb. I know that there are 2.2lb in a kg so it's easy enough to work out that she is 13.2lb. But then they assume I mean 13lb2oz which is obviously not true.
Does it matter?- I hear you ask! Obviously not, I probably should get out more. Maybe I am some sort of numbers genius / crazy person like that John Nash fellow. Our possibly just a sleep-deprived mother of a 3 month old...

[InMySpareTime]

In Early Years literature, it does go up to 11.
The EYFS (and more recently Development Matters) are more likely to use "35 months" as it fits their age banded groups better, but the training literature case studies would say "2.11"

[somebloke123]

I suppose if the calendar brought in after the French Revolution had prevailed there wouldn't be this problem. They divided the year into 10 months. The only one whose name I can remember is Thermidor.

[WMittens]

somebloke123

There were still 12 months, but they were 30 days each, and contained 3 10-day weeks.

[jaynebxl]

A year clearly is not base ten but base 12 so I don't mind someone writing 3.11 or whatever as we all know what they mean.

[lougle]

In this case the . is a demarcation, not a decimal point. Just as imperial uses 5'5", for example.

[somebloke123]

Thanks WMittens - I stand corrected.

[cumfy]

And people wondered why we bought in SI units.

[WMittens]

And people wondered why we bought in SI units.

Was it because they were on special offer?

[cumfy]

Just testing Mittens.

[Trills]

If I write that I am 5'11 tall, are you upset that I am using an apostrophe? Or do you realise that it's just an indicator of " 5 somethings and 11 something-elses"?