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Subject:Handling ranges of negative numbers From:"Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> Date:Tue, 27 Oct 1998 11:32:30 -0700
Kate Kane wondered <<How do you write a range of numbers when the
first number is negative? I tried hyphen, digit, space, endash,
space, digit but it doesn't look right>>
When in doubt, think laterally (or perhaps I should say "literally"
<g>): simply say "-X to -Y". In some specialized applications, you
might get away with something like (-x, -y) or (-x...-y) to denote
an interval provided that you define your convention and then proceed
to use it consistently, but outside of mathematics (where there are
specific notations for this sort of thing), that's unnecessarily
complex for most readers and most applications.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"By God, for a moment there it all made sense!"--Gahan Wilson
