[ranko]

"28 times smaller than" (and the like) is one of my bugbears. I think it means "1/28th of the size", but then you get constructions like "three times smaller than" instead of the clearer and more obvious "one third the size of". Trying to think too hard about what it means to be "N times smaller than" becomes pretty confusing, I think.

In a newspaper, I'd rather see something like "4% of the width of a human hair", which is surely accurate enough given the variability of hair widths and clearer too.

[NeoTar]

Steve Mould, the YouTuber, has a fun takedown of the phrase "6 times colder than", and how in every reasonable interpretation it is completely meaningless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C91gKuxutTU