Would these be correct, minus hyphens in modifiers? I think all these look great as presented... no excess clutter... no recasts, please, for these commonly uttered phrases. an $80-$90 million a year industry a $10-$20 per day fee an $11 a barrel price a 25-30% a year increase a 10% a year increase a 20% per year reduction Thank you ..
I am no expert, but here is how I would write these: An $80-90 million industry, or: an eighty to ninety million dollar industry (probably the latter in an informal piece) a $10-20 per day fee an $11 per barrel increase a 25-30% per year increase a 10% per year increase a 20% per year reduction
Following that guidance we could do this too, I think... the first $ sign is sufficient for both figures? an $80-90 million a year industry a $1-5 per day fee a $1,000-2,000 per month deduction Or: a $1-2,000 per month deduction (Or does this range look like "a one dollar to two thousand dollar per month deduction"?) ...that is, omit the $ sign before the second figure in each example above... look good?
And yes, a $1-2000 deduction would imply anywhere from one to two thousand dollars. BTW, very often in fiction writing numbers are written out as in five rather than 5 anyway, rendering your question less relevant in that genre.
So, obviously, $3 means two different things in the following examples; it just depends on the figure that follows it to convey the appropriate meaning. Does anybody see any ambiguity in the two examples below? This is nonfiction, of course. a $3-5 a month fee a $3-4,000 a year loss Thanks.
Well the 3 in the first is in the single digits, and the second is representing in the thousands. Am I close? It seems pretty cut and dry to me, but then again I am not a complete imbecile that would think you are trying to write some bad subtraction equations.