[thelist] Many or More?

Joel D Canfield joel at spinhead.com
Thu Oct 12 11:47:34 CDT 2006


> My statement is "most web pages created since the mid-1990's 
> use tables for
> layout" and she wonders if I should have written "many" 
> instead of "most".
> 
> I don't think there is a way to quantify this statement 
> (easily, that is) so
> I am asking you, would you agree with "most" or "many"?

many. maybe.

Merriam Webster defines 'most' as 'the majority of' (so of course I
looked up 'majority' and it says 'a number or percentage equaling more
than half of a total')

thus, if we're looking only two options, ('tables for layout' and 'not
tables for layout') then 'most' would technically mean at least 51% (or
50.01% or however fine ya wanna slice it.) Anecdotally, that might be a
good assumption, but I don't think most folks (many or most?) would take
'most' to mean 51%.

I'd be inclined to do more research, meself, and see if there was
empirical evidence as to how many sites use tables for layout. My
standards leaning hopes it's 'many', not 'most'

joel



More information about the thelist mailing list