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I couldn't help but notice an ambiguity in the phrase

> Summer temperatures drop by 1.5°C to 2.5°C

While I now understand that it means a drop of roughly 2°C plus or minus 0.5°C, my initial reading was that the temperature dropped from 4°C (in the previous Summer) to 2.5°C (in Summer of 536).

Is the meaning of "a drop by A to B" always to be inferred from context?



Proposing the following modification to the English language:

For your interpretation: "drop by X, to Y"

For author's intention: "drop by X-Y"


In the timeline on the page, it uses both uses - "Summer temperatures drop by 1.5°C to 2.5°C" and "Summer temperatures drop again by 1.4°C–2.7°C in Europe".

It took a few reads and an internal debate over whether European summer temperatures could possibly have been 4°C in the 6th century to understand what the author meant.




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