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Comment by marcosdumay | Hacker News Reader

Please, if the title is going to be that, at least remove the capitalization from that "m", so it represents an unity instead of "millions of something undisclosed".

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Hacker News capitalized the “M” by itself.

"so it represents an unity instead"

If you are going to be pedantic, that "an" should be an "a", no?

That’s what I was thinking, yes.

You have to think HOW you pronounce the word. The ‘u’ in “unity” is pronounced as “you” which starts with a consonant. Hence, you use ‘a’ not “an”.

I've always wondered this, as a non English native speaker. You could also say the "u" in unity is pronounced as "iu" which starts with a vowel and sounds the same as "you", so your reasoning sounds incorrect. Perhaps a better explanation is that the "iu" diphthong is already paired together, so attaching it to the "an" sound to form "aniu" doesn't roll off the tongue as well.

Correct, this particular diphthong and the substitution of "an" for "a" serve the same exact function, so having both would be redundant. If we were to look at a word that starts with u but doesn't have the diphthong, such as Ubuntu, then "an" is used.

I think unity is just a typo for unit, not that that changes this discussion.

But Y is a vowel?

Yeah, occasionally. The previous sentence uses it as both.

Sometimes...

Only when your mouth parts move a certain way to pronouce it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6As7KhrFQ4

English rules for using "a" or "an" depend on sounds used in the next word, not particular letters. "A unit" and "An hour" are easy examples that might trip people up when focused on the letters used in spelling, but if you sound it out, you can probably work out what sounds best.

And of course it's even more complex when you mix UK vs US English:

- an herb (US), where the "h" is silent

- a herb (UK)

Cue confusion about "an historic".

Submitted title was "Researchers reached the bottom of ice sheet at -2670m after 7 years of drilling". I've reverted to the article title now, or rather a slightly rewritten version to omit the linkbait.

Our software did screw up the m->M thing. Sorry!

Thank you for pointing this out. I thought it was referring to the age of the samples taken before reading your comment. It made the abstract less disappointing.

I only clicked on the article because I thought it was the age of the samples too.

If something has a negative age, does that mean it is from the future?

I can't tell if you're joking, but negative numbers are used to represent years BC.

It responds to the comment "I only clicked on the article because I thought it was the age of the samples too." Age is "The length of time that a person or thing has existed." AD and BC are both absolute values from a zero point, both positive ("1 BC is year 0, 45 BC is year −44" [0]). A relative chronological dating by some phenomenological method such as radiocarbon or thermolumenescence might establish a negative date relative to some other known benchmark [1].

How might something dated from the future be found? I'm not certain, but maybe it has to do with aliens that are all the rage nowadays.

If I were 12 years old, I would have been born 12 years ago.

If I were -12 years old, I would be born 12 years from now.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_dating

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Hadn't even thought about the difference between age and year when I wrote that.

Thanks.

Also, a space is needed.

> The numerical value always precedes the unit and a space is always used to separate the unit from the number.

The International System of Units. 9th edition, section 5.4.3, page 149. https://www.bipm.org/en/publications/si-brochure

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