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christoff12yesterday at 9:32 PM2 repliesview on HN

An irrational gripe of mine is how GPT uses 7× instead of 7x.

I recognize that the former is the multiplication symbol, but I don't think it should be used that way.


Replies

Daneel_today at 12:16 AM

If anything, writing "7x" is actually just a poor emulation of writing "7×".

Saying something is "done at 7x speed" should be read as "done at seven times speed" not as "done at seven x speed". So using the 'times' (multiplication) symbol is the better form in my opinion; it just happens to be significantly easier to type "x" instead, which is how we got here.

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krzyktoday at 6:01 AM

Interesting I always thought that "x" (whichever) is used informally for multiplication and proper sign is dot: 3 · 4 = 12

It looks like there is a difference between English speaking languages and the rest in that regard.

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