Gingerous has emailed in an amusing quote from a review of the MacBook Air laptop (pictured above) which he came across in the April edition of IT Manager magazine:
The MacBook Air is Apple's take on the ultraportable notebook. At a mere 1.4kg and 4mm at its thinnest point and 19mm at its thickest (the hinge at the back), and weighing in at just 1.36kg, it's definitely ultraportable.
Gingerous rightly comments: "Now I'm not sure on the grammar side of things (although it didn't read too well to me), but why does the weight of the laptop get mentioned twice and why are they different?"
Um, maybe it depends on how full the hard drive is. Or does anyone have any better suggestions?
The online version of the story sadly doesn't contain the offending copy...
6 comments:
It's a matter of rounding.
Captain Kirk says, "only about 1.4kg" and Spock says, "1.36kg."
Have you ever heard the comedian's joke? "how smart is Spock really? Didn't he ever learn to round off? 'It's 11:59.36'--It's NOON, Spock, it's noon!"
And a reminder when you have parentheses--it's harder to connect the two halves of the sentence.
Probably the first part of the press release had the rounded-off figure, and the writer (or editor?) merged the two.
I'm sure the "thin-ness" statements in the article are also invalid - surely the thickest point is all anyone cares about?
If you want to place/slide anything, anywhere (oooh-err) then surely it's the overall thickness that counts....or maybe I've just started the age old debate...
I am sure you are right about the rounding, Toots, but if IT Manager is making a point about the lightness of the laptop surely even 0.04kg is significant?
Neil, mature as ever! You made me laugh out loud though...
Yeah, i've never understood why writers or editors do that: round off for the lead, and then give more specific info later.
Why not just go straight to the most accurate info?
I can see, sometimes, in a headline, since space is SO important ("$4B deficit" in the headline, and "$3.97 billion deficit" in the lead, maybe).
But otherwise--can't most readers handle the extra decimal points?
And the repetition can be really confusing. I'm thinking of a headline that said something like:
"Company A pays $4B for Company B,"
and then the lead said,
"Company A agreed to buy Company B for cash and other considerations totalling nearly $4 billion"
and then four paragraphs later:
"Company A will pay $2.7 billion in cash and hand over real estate worth $1.2 billion."
Why not say in the lead: "Company A agree to pay $2.7 billion in cash and $1.2 in real estate concessions for Company B."
The headline has summarized--let's stop summarizing and get to some facts!
But then, I don't edit newspapers; I just read them. (I edit consumer magazines.)
It's really very light!
But there are really lighter laptops:
http://www.maconair.com/compare
http://ghepardoo.blogspot.com/2008/05/orange-brings-macbook-air-in-romania.html
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