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Re: describing range - use of from/between

Subject: Re: describing range - use of from/between
From: Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 23:28:49 -0500


Nuzath,

While all of the options are acceptable, I share your discomfort with "between 0 and 5" because it does introduce just a slight bit of ambiguity--or it could under certain circumstances.

Your examples suggest that only the integers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are valid responses. But there are many circumstances where a valid value might be any real number within a range.

In these cases it is probably best to use the appropriate mathematical symbols to express the range. I can't do this properly in ascii text, but if you will imagine that "<=" is supposed to be a "less than or equals" symbol, then you can express ranges that either do or do not include their endpoints with expressions like "0 <= fribble < 5"; there is a more compact notation used among mathematicians--"[0,5)"--but that is not something you would use in most technical writing situations.

Dick

Nuzhath Shereen wrote:

Hello,

To describe a range of values:
When should we use "from" and when should we use "between"? In both cases,
are the start and end numbers included?

for example: What is the difference between the foll? (or can we use these
interchangeably?)

The valid values are 0 to 5
The valid values are from 0 to 5 (no ambiguity here)
The valid values are between 0 and 5 (does this include 0 and 5)?
The valid range is 0 to 5?

Guess what I really want to know is the general way to describe fields that
can take values from a range of numbers (version number, log level, severity
level etc.,)



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References:
Putting tips/notes within a numbered list?: From: Hart, Geoff
describing range - use of from/between: From: Nuzhath Shereen

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