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Comment by Willingham | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely love the work done here! Only change I would make is change "rubber" to "eraser" to help more English speaking children understand the content (:

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Since it's a spoof of gov.uk, "rubber" is correct!

Oh god I knew this would be contentious

I've just changed it to 'eraser' but actually I should make it conditional on your navigator.language...

I applaud your commitment to this bit. Thank you for making the world a nicer place.

Given the source of truth is British English, the maths says no.

Ooh! Perfect opportunity to ask a question I’ve definitely not spent an inordinate amount of time wondering about without bothering to look for an answer!

Is maths in British English plural? Like, should that be “the maths say”?

It's always "maths" not "math" but we'd always say "the maths says" and I've never questioned it until right now

It's still singular. Maths is just a contraction of mathematics, but without an apostrophe.

Thanks! Now I have more questions, but they're better. This is good progress.

Just like "the science says" (but unlike "the English say" ;) ).

Mathematics is uncountable (:

And dense!

Given the (highly memed) state of dental health in the UK it seems reasonable they would be responsible for this.

Even in Soviet textbooks for English in elementary schools (which are garbage by any standard) both variants were presented (:

I have a TEFL certificate (Teacher of English as a Second Language) and I'm a native speaker and avid reader -- and this was the first time I ever encountered "rubber" as a synonym for "eraser". The benefit of the latter term is it's unambiguous and easily understood.

I agree on eraser being superior.

I have an even weirder example from Russian language: file, folder and pocket are 3 out of dozen different words being used to describe a plastic envelope for documents in various regions and people don't understand each other. I remember only one more.

As has already been pointed rubber is common British English, but perhaps more interestingly the etymology of name of the substance comes from this usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraser#History

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