The Common Problem<\/h2>\n
The problem is mainly around describing increases. At least, I rarely see improper percentage use around decreases because once you\u2019re down 100%, you are out of whatever you are measuring. Unless we\u2019re talking about money. Since going into debt is not a topic I want to cover today, we\u2019ll just stick to increases.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say you are watching how many visits your website gets in a day. If yesterday you had 100 visits and today you have 125 visits, that is an increase of 25%. If yesterday you had 100 visits and today you have 200, that is twice as many visitors. 250 visitors would be 2.5 times as many.<\/p>\n
What About Consistency?<\/h3>\n
Consistency dictates that you use the same terminology when describing increases. However, when your increases are in multiples, consistency is no longer an issue \u2013 accuracy is.<\/p>\n
It is OK to stop speaking in parts when your increases are in multiples.<\/p>\n
You could start speaking in fractions, but that gets extremely awkward quickly.<\/p>\n
Just to Make Things More Confusing<\/h2>\n
Here\u2019s another thing. If you say you have 200% of something, that\u2019s different than a 200% increase<\/strong> of something.<\/p>\n 200% of something is two. However, an increase that gets you to twice as many as you had originally is a 100% increase. So, does a 200% increase take you to three times as many or four?<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t matter what you have after a 200% increase because there is no such thing as a 200% increase!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n You CAN have twice as many, three times as many, four times as many. You CAN have double, triple, or quadruple. Yet, you can ONLY have 100 percent!<\/p>\n -Lorrie Nicoles<\/p>\n My sister, the HR person, argues that you can have more than 100% depending on what you\u2019re talking about. For example, the difference between A and B can be 200% that between B and C. I think it\u2019s the comparison of two differences so there isn\u2019t really an original value that you are comparing to.<\/p>\n Personally, I think that the difference between A and B is twice that between B and C.<\/p>\n We agreed that we would never agree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Language evolves. Words change meaning \u2013 sometimes to the opposite of the original definition. I get this, sometimes I encourage it, sometimes I don\u2019t. However, there are some incorrectly used words that evolution will never fix. Today\u2019s rant is around the use of the word \u201cpercent.\u201d Simply put, percent means \u201cof 100.\u201d It is another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,5,3],"tags":[253,251,254,252],"class_list":["post-957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rants","category-usage","category-words","tag-increase","tag-percent","tag-percent-meaning","tag-percentage"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"No](\"https:\/\/torawriting.com\/sandbox\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/No-_100-300x251.png\")
And, the Rant<\/h2>\nPostscript 9 February 2021<\/h2>\n