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AusDTO / gov-au-content-guide

The draft previous version of the GOV.AU Content Guide. We have moved:
https://github.com/govau/content-guide
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Non-data use of numbers (especially 1) in sentences #148

Closed joolswood closed 7 years ago

joolswood commented 7 years ago

What do you need?

Guidance on use of numbers when they are not data, and one generally. For example 'There is 1 way to do this' or 'The 1 strategy for'.

It may be justified to add some more rationale on this one.

Which entry/section is this related to?

http://content-style-guide.apps.staging.digital.gov.au/az-indexes/n.html#numbers

Good example

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-style#numbers

joolswood commented 7 years ago

Digits rather words for numbers have two main benefits online - they assist people with Dyslexia and they aid scanability (noting the difference between on-line vs off-line reading styles). Some references I'm aware of include: …

An Eye-Tracking Study of Number Representation Readability Conclusions and Future Work: The presence of numerical information in a text impacts its readability. We have analyzed some of the different representations of numerical expressions in text to study their influence in the reading process of people with or without dyslexia. For each experiment our hypotheses have been tested and depending on the kind of numerical information for each group we have obtained different results. The main contribution of this research is that numbers represented as digits instead of words as well as percentages instead of fractions improve readability of people with dyslexia. Source: www.taln.upf.edu/system/files/biblio_files/Interact2013-nene.pdf (PDF) …

Show Numbers as Numerals When Writing for Online Readers Summary: It's better to use "23" than "twenty-three" to catch users' eyes when they scan Web pages for facts, according to eyetracking data. Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/web-writing-show-numbers-as-numerals/

joolswood commented 7 years ago

New wording in Numerals before 10 doc

joolswood commented 7 years ago

Hey @nigelbartlett I've added your words to bugfix/148-numerals. Can we find a more precise way of saying Use a word for expressions where a digit would look odd.?

joolswood commented 7 years ago

See https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-style#numbers

Use ‘one’ unless you’re talking about a step, a point in a list or another situation where using the numeral makes more sense: ‘in point 1 of the design instructions’, for example.
joolswood commented 7 years ago

https://github.com/govau/content-guide/issues/49