> The home secretary has said cannabis is to be reclassified as a class B drug.
Obviously this won’t improve anything at all. But what most caught my eye is the handy table at the bottom of the article, reproduced here for your perusal (content unchanged but HTML vastly improved):
| Drug class | Type of drug | Possession | Dealing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class A | Ecstasy, LSD, heroin, cocaine, crack, magic mushrooms, amphetamines (if prepared for injection). | Up to seven years in prison or an unlimited fine or both. | Up to life in prison or an unlimited fine or both. |
| Class B | Amphetamines, Methylphenidate (Ritalin), Pholcodine. | Up to five years in prison or an unlimited fine or both. | Up to 14 years in prison or an unlimited fine or both. |
| Class C | Cannabis, tranquilisers, some painkillers, Gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), Ketamine. | Up to two years in prison or an unlimited fine or both. | Up to 14 years in prison or an unlimited fine or both. |
(I wonder why they used words (seven, five, two) in the third column and numerals in the fourth)
In the interests of making the punishment proportional to the severity of the crime, here’s my proposal for new drug laws. Does anyone have a problem with this? If anything, I think they might still be a little on the harsh side.
| Drug class | Possession | Dealing |
|---|---|---|
| Class A | Confiscation | Up to 10 years in prison or an unlimited fine. |
| Class B | Confiscation | Up to 7 years in prison or an unlimited fine. |
| Class C | Confiscation | Up to 5 years in prison or an unlimited fine. |
Disclaimer: I don’t do any of the above drugs.
11 replies on “The laws don’t work”
I think the BBC generally uses numerals only for numbers greater than ten (or 10 if you prefer). Actually, I think that is a common style for many media outlets. Generally the eye parses numerals more effectively than words when the number involved is greater than the number of fingers that we have, but handles words quite well for numbers less than that.
Here’s an experiment. Without the influence of any narcotics, read the following and see which works best for you:
5 gold rings,
4 calling birds,
3 French hens,
2 turtle doves,
and a partridge in a pear tree.
five gold rings,
four calling birds,
three French hens,
two turtle doves,
and a partridge in a pear tree.
42 days detention;
forty two days detention
365 days a year;
three hundred and sixty five days a year
oh, and on drugs – hang ’em!!
</Daily Mail>
Another BBC example: 2008; two thousand and eight; MMVIII. 🙂
I agree that 2008 is more readable than “two thousand and eight” but I think that if you’re going to fill a table with data, you need to be consistent. For example:
I was going to say the same thing as Graybo. It’s certainly Guardian style. But then that second table shot that to shit.
Oh! Sorry!
(Do I have to apologise about swearing around small children if I am not actually around small children but know that you usually are? I feel like I should. I will!)
I don’t have anything to say about drugs though.
Please, keep swearing on this site for now.
Of course, in a few years Bernard will ask me “daddy, can I see your blog?” and I’ll have to go on a crazy editing frenzy, assisted by these search pages and this page too.
Disclaimer: I don’t do any of the above drugs.
Not even the painkillers? Does you, or anyone you know, push Calpol to your child ? 🙂
p.s. Quality table display on this blog
Fucking marvellous, thanks Pete.
Paul: Yeah, okay, painkillers. Fair point. Thanks for the positive remark about the table display. Check out the HTML and CSS behind it too. It’s pretty flawless, if I do say so myself.
Anna: One day, after the aforementioned editing frenzy has been done, this comments thread is going to make no sense at all. It will seem like we’re all part of some group hallucination.
I don’t believe any of you people in this thread are real anymore anyway.
There are several thoughts regarding writing out numbers and numerals and it mostly depends on writer and the context. A common practice is to spell out numbers that consist of one or possibly two words – another is to spell out small numbers and not anything larger than (for example) ten/10. It’s not peculiar to media outlets, it’s something I was taught years and years and years ago and have come across again both in fiction writing and in academic writing guidelines. The main thing is to be consistent.
Well, it’s only consistent inasmuch as it is consistently inconsistent.