On Thursday 24 March 2011 20:19:44 Bill Hooper wrote: > Recently, one of our correspondents (it doesn't matter who) wrote about > temperatures and referred to values just in "degrees" without specifying > Celsius or Fahrenheit. (See excerpt below.) I know most of us on this list > are sufficiently aware of Celsius temperature values to know that he must > have been referring to Celsius degrees. My question is two-fold and I only > have a "one-fold" answer (for myself). > > (1) Is it proper, in general, to omit the qualifier "Celsius" when > referring to temperature in Celsius degrees? > > (2) Is it proper to omit "Celsius", when conversing with those who are > thoroughly familiar with Celsius temperatures, so that there would be no > danger whatsoever that the reader would mistakenly think the temperatures > were Fahrenheit?
One may omit "Celsius" only if it is obvious to the listener that the quantity is a temperature, not an angle or a concentration measured by specific gravity or index of refraction. If I hear "It is 45, 60, or 90 degrees in Charlotte today," I take it to be an angle, because 1) those numbers, in degrees Celsius, are out of range for the weather here, and 2) taken as degrees, they are common angles. If I hear "It is 7 degrees", though, I take it to be a temperature. Pierre -- La sal en el mar es más que en la sangre. Le sel dans la mer est plus que dans le sang.
