Comment by bxparks
1 year ago
I couldn't understand the original wording either, but after reading one of the sibling comments that explains it, it suddenly made sense.
I think you left out a few words that most English writers would include. So instead of:
> "ensure that numbers from one to ten as written as words and numbers greater ten as digits in the given text",
something like the following might be better for most people:
> "ensure that the numbers from one to ten are written as words, and the numbers greater ten are written using numerical digits in the given text"
There are multiple ways to write this, so other people may have better versions.
I'm not an English grammar expert, so I cannot explain to you why the addition of those extra words helps with the clarity of that sentence.
Much better, but still missing "than" after "greater", which seems kind of critical.
"Using" is important as a number greater than ten can't be written as a digit, but can be written using digits ("with" would be just as good). Repeating "written" makes it clearer that there are two instructions.
It's funny, I didn't notice the missing "than" until much later. After I learned the intended meaning of the original sentence, my mind just seemed to insert the missing "than" automatically.
Mine as well. After understanding the meaning thanks to the other posters, the sentence magically looked fine. But before knowing the meaning, it was gibberish. I’ve become aware of this before, and it makes me wonder just how often I’m interpreting grammatical nonsense on a daily basis without realizing it.
Hilariously, you can ask GPT 4 to explain the “why” of arbitrary grammar fixes.
It’s a common style guide in newspapers.