Using copy and paste this morning I had to change “… 1 hour …” to “… 0.5 hours … .” However, if I had changed the 1 to ½ it would have remained “ … hour … .” Also, why is it that we say “1 mile” but we say “1.0 miles”? Being a native English speaker, I am not bothered by any of this because English is weird. I am just wondering how it got to be this way.
This probably doesn’t answer the how/why part, but the Chicago Manual of Style gives the rule as:
My WAG is that the general case is that for countable things you always use the plural form. The only exception is for the specific case of 1 item - then you use singular. The fractional form is just a modification of the singular case - e.g. half of a mile, five thirds of a mile - not a “counted group” of miles.
Think about the words you say. For example, I read “1/2” as “half”, and “0.5” as “zero-point-five”. The word “half” denotes singular, while “five” denotes plural. And, similarly “1” is “one” and singular; “1.0” is “one-point-zero” and plural.
The grammar falls out naturally when speaking, so I typically write out numbers as words instead of numerals.
But 1.1 is still one point one miles even though the one is right there before the word.
I might that we also say 0 miles. I doubt there will be a principled explanation for any of this. One is the only singular number. (Note that singular is related to single).
There’s the old timey way of using the singular in every case. A location could be “5 mile down the road”.
That is a great point.
I’ve already given a counter example: half.
I think the logic (to the extent that logic applies in the English language) is that a half or a third or specific named (singular?) fractions are actual things. one half is one item. The “one” is right there for clarification. “I went one half mile down the road.” OTOH it can be argued it’s actually shorthand for “one half of a mile”. But it’s “one and a half miles” plural because it’s two things, a “one” and a “half”.
“Half a loaf is better than none…”
Or… maybe English is weird.
Well, unless the unit is used to describe something else:
The movie lasted 2 hours. Correct.
It was a 2 hours movie. Incorrect.
It was a 2 hour movie. Correct.
He weighs 170 pounds. Correct.
He’s a 170 pounds man. Incorrect.
He’s a 170 pound man. Correct.
Most guides for technical writing I’ve seen suggest a dash between the number and the unit in these instances.
2-hour movie
170-pound man
Usually the examples given are more like:
1000-mL beaker
1-gallon jug
One is the loneliest number
One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do
But two can be as bad as one.
It really can’t. One is singular.
One singular sensation
Every little step he takes.
One thrilling combination
Every move that he makes.
A three hour tour, ♫
…a three hour tour.♪
That’s standard grammar in Hungarian and Turkish. The concept is, once you’ve stated a numeral coefficient, that makes it obviously plural, so changing to plural morphology would be redundant. Plural forms are only for un-numerated groups. They would either say “Some miles down the road” or “Five mile down the road.”
It is in Russian that 2 to 4 things are still singular [genitive], I mean e.g. as in две девушки, so it takes at least 5 to be plural… (пять девушек)
There are languages in which the endings of words changes much more than just between one and more than one, as you can see in Grammatical number - Wikipedia .
Also in Irish. The singular form is used after a number.
In Arabic, number use is remarkably unintuitive. There’s a dual, so plural only starts with 3 and up. Numbers 3–10 are adjectives that take a feminine gendered form with masculine plural nouns in the genitive case, and take a masculine gendered form with feminine plural nouns in the genitive case. But for 11 to 19, numbers are adjectives that match the gender of nouns, always in the accusative case. Then for 20 and up, numbers are nouns that don’t match gender (because only adjectives match gender). From 20 to 99, they go with nouns in the singular accusative case. For 100 and up, they go with nouns in the singular genitive case. This beats even Russian for complexity.
Also, a three mile hike. In both cases, the noun is being used attributively, that is to modify another noun. Rules about attributive nouns are often different from those applying to substantive nouns. This is just one example.