The temperature is negative 7 °F, not minus 7 °F!

To me, “negative 7” sounds wrong, like someone calling the year 1985 “one thousand, nine hundred eighty-five.” It’s usually “7 below” but also “minus 7.”

Similarly, I definitely prefer currency to use the symbols. I instinctively think of “$50” as money, have to take an (split second) extra mental step to process “50 dollars” that way. This has also made it easy for me to process other currencies that way, since they have a funky symbol.

I dug out my trusty Associated Press Stylebook (note: one word) and Briefing on Media Law and quote from it verbatim.

Then I listened to the NOAA weather report for Chicago. If you’ve never heard a NOAA report, it uses a computer synthesized voice. It reported the temperature as “minus 16 degrees.”

Two cites, no negatives.

I’ve always heard minus used in weather forecasts.

Even in basic math, 7 minus 5 equals 2. Or a kids math book may say subtract 5 from 7.

Negative is an operator used solving equations.

  • (7 -5) + 4 = 2

Your grammer is da shits. But I will say this:

Neither man nor mankind should take even a small step out in weather like that.

I’ll just go with “booger-freezing weather”.

I have also heard respectable mathematicians teach the exact opposite, that is, always to say “minus”. Not sure what the reasoning would be, either way.

Back to the weather, Jack London sometimes, interestingly, refers to “degrees of frost”. For example, -50 F are “eighty-odd degrees of frost”.

So, after all this, I’m still stymied by what the OP finds objectionable about the construction. OP, are you there?

Meh. It’s “seven below” in Hoosierspeak, at least in my experience.

I don’t see the problem either. The weatherman is speaking to the general public. They want to use easily understood language. It’s 5 below zero or it’s minus 5.

They aren’t speaking directly to mathematicians.

I feel really negative about how damn cold it gets.

Yes, and have (quietly) read the comments. Apparently I am in a small minority. :stuck_out_tongue:

But that’s the thing. Judging by the thread, apparently even mathematicians and folks who deal with negative numbers don’t seem to care or at least have a consensus.

At least temps in Fahrenheit are usually above zero throughout the US. (wind chill gets much colder)

Celsius goes negative anytime it’s below freezing. I would find that annoying.

This is really not the right week to make that claim. Although if by “usually” you mean “more than 50% of the time” it’s probably correct.

God, how I miss Calvin and Hobbes.

So I asked my dad, and this was his view –

“Positive” and “negative” indicate descriptions for two kinds of a thing. So a positive attitude and a negative attitude are two kinds of attitude. A positive integer and a negative integer are two kinds of integers.

But “positive 1” and “negative 1” are not two kinds of “1.” They are completely separate numbers. They have certain mathematical relationships with each other, but “-1” is not a type of “(+)1.” So that’s why he doesn’t like “negative 1.”

He also did say, however, that usage does change, so at some point there’s no point in objecting.

It’s Nine Below Zero!

I mean, I prefer “minus one” or “one below” for temps, but your dad’s distinction seems pretty arbitrary to me. Positive and negative integers can be seen as two kinds of the same thing. A positive is an integer of what you have. A negative is the same integer of what you owe. So both +$7 and -$7 represent seven dollars. In the first, I have them; in the second I owe them. Both in the same quantity. It perhaps doesn’t work that neatly with temperatures, but there are real-world examples of positive and negative integers that both refer to the same quantity, just on which side of the ledger they are.

That’s looking at numbers like an accountant. Remember that my dad is a mathematician. To him, +7 and -7 aren’t just the same quantity on different sides of a ledger. They are two different numbers that exist independently of each other. To him “-7” is a quantity in and of itself, conceptually separate from “+7”. It’s not just “7” placed in a different bucket.

Similarly, to him, “0” is a number that exists in and of itself, an integer that is neither positive nor negative. It’s not the absence of something. He would always correct me if I equated zero with “none” or “nothing” while doing math.