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Thursday, 17 January 2013

Percentages: a rant

The present financial...thingy (debt-crisis, recession, depression, cliff, whatever)...has of course been caused by footballers.

Well, it's been at least partly caused by all those idiots who think, like so many professional sports people, that it's a good thing to give more than a 100 per cent, anyway.

Because if you do give 120 per cent, as professional footballers are so often expected to do, then naturally you'll have to borrow 20 per cent from someone else to get it.

I think it explains a lot, myself.

Phrase To Use Today: per cent. This Mediaeval Latin phrase has been part of English since the 1500s and has been causing confusion ever since. It means out of every hundred.

The per cent sign, % evolved from the letter o, which in Italian was used in the same way as st and nd (as in 1st and 2nd) is used in English.

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