I haven't been following the thread closely, but getting back to units, in
College physics, we had to work problems in both metric and US units. I
got tired of having to multiply or divide everything by 32 in US measure,
so I did the problems with velocities in furlongs per fortnight and
accelerations in furlongs per fortnight squared...

Harold


> Russell McMahon wrote:
>
>> The devil is in the details
>
> You're right, that's where the devil is. This is probably the reason why
> some don't really want to go there :)
>
>> in this case in the text that you show as [...] I said "... here ...".
>
> Talking about details, I can't find a "here" in your past messages
> regarding this matter :)
>
> You said "we", though, but it wasn't quite clear who "we" is. The two
> concepts ("we" and "here") have some orthogonal aspects.
>
>
>> Unless you are accustomed to NZ documents your observations are unlikely
>> to be wholly relevant, notwithstanding the somewhat universality of
>> legalese.
>
> Come on, Russell... it seems you are being stubborn just for stubborn's
> sake :)  Actually, you so far rather convinced me that fortnight is indeed
> quite rare in formal documents in NZ, mainly because if it were being
> used,
> you would have come out of the conditional a long time ago and cited some
> funny or otherwise memorable use of it.
>
>
> Here's a bit commented history:
>
> Me: "... maybe fortnight is not that frequent in formal (business)
> language?"
>
> You: "We have almost no formal distinctions between formal and informal
> language. [...] almost any word which is acceptable English is 'good to
> go'
> in almost any context. So 'fortnight' could be used without raising an
> eyebrow in any context at all."
>
> Comment: The distinction between formal and informal language is not what
> could be used, it is what actually is used in different environments.
> While
> the majority of words could be used in every setting, only a certain
> subset
> is commonly used in specific situations, and there are some subsets of
> commonly used words that can be associated with classes of situations. So
> my comment was not about whether fortnight could be used, it was about how
> frequently it is actually used in formal (business) language. You so far
> have not stated that you know of a single instance where it was used in
> such a situation. To me this indicates a low frequency of use (exactly
> because I put value in what you write, even though it may not look like it
> right now :)
>
>
> Me: "I at least haven't seen it in a contract. Nor in a formal text
> written
> in the last ten years."
>
> You: "Unless you are accustomed to NZ documents your observations are
> unlikely to be wholly relevant, notwithstanding the somewhat universality
> of legalese."
>
> Comment: I'm not sure where the restriction to NZ comes from (my original
> comment to which you responded was an answer to Howard), and I'm in fact
> not familiar with NZ documents. But independently of this, let's get real
> finally: have you (certainly familiar with NZ documents) seen fortnight
> used in a formal (business) document that was written in the last ten
> years? And if so, was this so often as to classify fortnight as one of the
> words commonly used in such documents that deserve their place in the
> vocabulary of formal (business) language? That's been the question, right?
>
> Gerhard
>
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