Slightly urgent question: .01 percentage point/s

[Mick Corliss]

Hi all,

I am working on something with a short turn-around time or I would do more snooping to figure this out on my own.

For a sentence reporting a change in something, say corporate profit, that deals with a tenth or tenths of a percentage point, which of the following renderings would you choose and why?

rose .01 percentage point

rose .01 of a percentage point

rose .01 percentage points

Mick@とりいそぎ

[Sheryl]

Hi Mike,

 

One-tenth of a percentage point would be 0.1. The examples below indicates hundredths. I, personally, would choose the first.

 

Sheryl Hogg

[Warren Smith]

For anything except "1," however, I would make it plural: "0.1 percentage POINTS"

---

From: hon...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hon...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Sheryl
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2010 5:11 PM
To: hon...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Slightly urgent question: .01 percentage point/s

[R Freeman]

Mick@とりいそぎ

For a sentence reporting a change in something, say corporate profit, that deals with a tenth or tenths of a percentage point, which of the following renderings would you choose and why? 

Three things to think about:

First, be careful when changing the words to numerals: as Sheryl points out 0.1 is a tenth; 0.01 is a hundredth.

Second, all units that are not 1 are expressed as plurals. I.e., "2 percentage points"; "1 percentage point"; "0.5 percentage points"

Third, it is most common (though not universal) to add a zero before the decimal point. "...0.1 percentage points..."

cheers,

Robert Freeman

[Ginstrom IT Solutions]

> Behalf Of R Freeman

> Second, all units that are not 1 are expressed as plurals. I.e., "2
> percentage points"; "1 percentage point"; "0.5 percentage points"

I agree with you, but not everybody does. The Microsoft Manual of Style, for example, states that it should be "0.1 point" (one of the only areas where I disagree with this guide).

I would also probably get rid of the "point," and just write, "0.1 percent."

Regards,
Ryan

--
Ryan Ginstrom
trans...@ginstrom.com
http://ginstrom.com/

[Fred Uleman]

Without bothering to cite a reference source, since the citations are all over the place anyway, I will simply say that I would call it 0.1 point.

That means I would not say "percentage point." Just "point." And if it were, say, 0.2, it would become plural "points."

FWIW
--
Fred Uleman, translator emeritus

[christopher blakeslee]

I will have to correct Ryan and disagree with Fred here.

There is a big difference between rising 0.1 ppt and rising 0.1%. Normally, an increase in a number that is already expressed as a percentage should be expressed as a percentage point increase. If inflation increases from 1% to 2% it has increased 1 percentage point, but it has also doubled, and thereby increased 100%.

Fred, what's the point in just using point? Although there may be obvious contexts where that could work, I think that is a pointless approach, since depending on the context it could be confused with a basis point, which is .01 percentage points. There are different kinds of points, one must distinguish.

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 8:00 PM, Fred Uleman <ful...@gmail.com> wrote:

That means I would not say "percentage point." Just "point." And if it were, say, 0.2, it would become plural "points."

FWIW
--
Fred Uleman, translator emeritus

--
chris blakeslee

[Ginstrom IT Solutions]

> Behalf Of christopher blakeslee

> be expressed as a percentage point increase. If inflation increases from
> 1% to 2% it has increased 1 percentage point, but it has also doubled, and
> thereby increased 100%.

Or it has increased *by* 1%, right?

[Warren Smith]

Chris wrote:
There is a big difference between rising 0.1 ppt and rising 0.1%. Normally, an increase in a number that is already expressed as a percentage should be expressed as a percentage point increase. If inflation increases from 1% to 2% it has increased 1 percentage point, but it has also doubled, and thereby increased 100%.

 ---------------

I agree with Chris completely. 

 

In a presentation I gave the other day on the State of the Union, I included this sentence: "In the US, unemployment rose by 50% in 2008, increasing by 2.5 percentage points from a base of 5%. It rose by another 50% (relative to its historical base) in 2009, increasing by 2.5 percentage points to its present level of 10%."  While I would have a hard time articulating the difference in usage between "percent" and "percentage point," the difference in usage is pretty clear in this example.

 

FWIW

 

Warren

[Jeremy Whipple]

On 10/01/15 14:48 +0900 (JST), christopher blakeslee wrote:
>
> Fred, what's the point in just using point? Although there may be obvious
> contexts where that could work, I think that is a pointless approach, since
> depending on the context it could be confused with a basis point, which is
> .01 percentage points. There are different kinds of points, one must
> distinguish.

I agree with CB, but if there are repeated mentions in the same passage, I
think it's fine (and in general preferable) to omit "percentage" in the
second mention and thereafter. And I'd say one can get away with the short
form even at first mention if the context makes it amply clear that the
reference is to percentage points, e.g., if there's redundancy: "a 0.1-point
increase from 4.8% to 4.9%."

--
Jeremy Whipple <jwhi...@gol.com>
Setagaya-ku, Tokyo

[Jeremy Whipple]

On 10/01/15 12:00 +0900 (JST), Fred Uleman wrote:

> Without bothering to cite a reference source, since the citations are all over
> the place anyway, I will simply say that I would call it 0.1 point.
>
> That means I would not say "percentage point." Just "point." And if it were,
> say, 0.2, it would become plural "points."

How about 0.01? Would you write "0.01 point"? (It's hard to imagine why not,
if you would write "0.1 point.")

But what about 0.11 point(s)? 1.01 point(s)?

[Fred Uleman]

Jeremy asks

How about 0.01? Would you write "0.01 point"?

Yes. it is only 1 hundredth of a point.
 

But what about 0.11 point(s)?

Points, because it is 11 hundredths.

 

1.01 point(s)?

Points. If I would say 1.5 points, anything that is more than 1 is plural, and 1.01 qualifies just as much as 1.1 or 1.00001 qualify.

FWIW

-- -- -- -- -- --
Fred Uleman, translator emeritus

[Wolfgang Bechstein]

Fred Uleman wrote:

> Jeremy asks
>
> > How about 0.01? Would you write "0.01 point"?
> >
> Yes. it is only 1 hundredth of a point.

This doesn't make sense to me. You seem to say that the "1" in 0.01
makes it singular, but the same number is also 10/1000 (ten thousandths)
of a point, or 100/10000 or 2/200 or any other fraction you care to
construct. 0.01 is no more or no less singular than 0.02 (1/50 or one
fiftieth of a point) is. Rather than number juggling, I think one simply
needs to pick a linguistic convention, and then use it consistently.

> > 1.01 point(s)?
> >
> Points. If I would say 1.5 points, anything that is more than 1 is plural,
> and 1.01 qualifies just as much as 1.1 or 1.00001 qualify.

Again, I fail to see the point, as it were. If one point is the unit,
and plural is taken to mean "two or more" (as it normally is), then
neither 1.5 points nor 1.01 points is plural. Only 2 points and above is
(are).

Make your bed in the linguistic convention and sleep in it, I'd say. And
in my opinion the most comfortable crib is the one that says 1 and only
1 is singular, everything else is plural.

Wolfgang Bechstein

[Jeremy Whipple]

On 10/01/16 1:01 +0900 (JST), Wolfgang Bechstein wrote:

> Make your bed in the linguistic convention and sleep in it, I'd say. And
> in my opinion the most comfortable crib is the one that says 1 and only
> 1 is singular, everything else is plural.

Well said! That's my crib of preference too, with the minor caveat that I
consider -1 singular also. (Just for the record, I'd treat _i_ as plural, as
in "The square root of minus one apple pie is _i_ apple pies.")