Day 174: State quantities accurately.

References to quantities give many writers, and their readers, difficulties. Most difficulties occur when speaking of terminal values in a range.

Consider this sentence:

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“I am willing to sell up to 15 tickets.”

Will this person sell 15 tickets if possible? Based on this statement, the person will not sell 15 tickets. “Up to” includes any value lower than 15, but not 15. If this person is, in fact, willing to sell 15 tickets, which is implied, this can be written simply as

“I’m willing to sell 15 tickets.”

Another way to state this is to write, “I am willing to sell as many as 15 tickets,” but this is more wordy than necessary. Now consider this sentence:

“This book has almost 200 pages.”

Here, the book could have more or fewer than 200 pages. 190 pages and 210 pages are both “almost” 200. If the writer wants to communicate that the page count is below 200 pages, he could write

“This book has slightly fewer than 200 pages” or
“The page count is just under 200.”

Finally, consider this sentence:

“The company has the budget to rent 6 or 7 vehicles.”

Which is it? Can the company rent 6 vehicles or 7 vehicles? The implied message is that both are possible. So, if both are possible, then this sentence should be written,

“The company has the budget to rent 7 vehicles.”

After all, if the company has the budget to rent 7 vehicles, then the company has the budget to rent any quantity under 7.