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by fells 471 days ago
> Would this not be the same as asking; "Are you 14 years old?"

"between x and y" normally includes the endpoints.

For example, if someone asks you to pick a number between 1 and 10, everyone would pretty much agree that 1 and 10 are acceptable choices.

3 comments

The ambiguity of such questions drove me up the wall as a child.

My mother has a story about how I would ask about future events as "the day after the day after the day after the day after the day after today", which in my mind was much clearer than "in X days" why it wasn't clear how rounding occurred.

Clearly, this set me up for a career involving off-by-one errors.

Ha! That's truly funny and obeys some kind of comedy rule about taking the story one way and then veering in a different direction. Well done, indeed.

Our daughter used to say "yesterday's yesterday" when she was 4ish and I really liked it.

Norwegian has the phrases "fra og med" and "til og med", where the "og med" means "including". So "from and including Monday" removes the ambiguity.
Okay, but if you say "pick a seat between Steve and Paul" I'm not going to sit in either lap.
They would be technically acceptable yet they would feel exceptional