| ▲ | verelo 2 days ago |
| Please add the measurement system to the title. The times should know better... |
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| ▲ | nkrisc 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Well it’s definitely not 97 K, it’s definitely not 97 C, so it’s probably 97 F which would put it in the same general ballpark as nearly all terrestrial vertebrates. |
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| ▲ | cr1895 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Though it should be pretty obvious from this context that it's not 97 Celsius or Kelvin. |
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| ▲ | verelo 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure, but 'F' is a lot shorter than "whichever unit doesn't kill the dinosaur." | | |
| ▲ | articulatepang 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Weird, my browser somehow doesn’t render the title as “T. Rex Had a Body Temperature of 97 Degrees whichever unit doesn’t kill the dinosaur”. It just leaves that last part out, making it even shorter than “F”. | | |
| ▲ | verelo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | "T. rex was warm" is even shorter again. I think we’ve established that omitting information saves space. |
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| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | ray_v 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Unless the Earth was a __VERY__ different place |
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| ▲ | aduwah 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I have asked ChatGPT to draw me an image of a 97 degree celsius t-rex and the result was absolutely amazing |
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| ▲ | dhdjddhx 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It seems that this headline is following the guidelines of the times style guide: "In general, ordinary references to temperature do not specify the scale." |
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| ▲ | verelo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Wow is that actually their guideline? | | |
| ▲ | t-writescode 2 days ago | parent [-] | | A random, spare letter wastes space and might have been A/B tested to have a higher click away rate. |
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| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | t-writescode 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The Times is a US magazine. The odds of them picking a US unit of measurement are very high. |
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| ▲ | verelo 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The same newspaper uses Celsius in its climate reporting, including the article below. Apparently the units depend on which extinction we’re discussing. One extra letter would save the guesswork. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/climate/united-nations-cl... Edit: Removed the headline quotation because the search listing and article heading differ. | | |
| ▲ | t-writescode 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This makes sense from a context and writer perspective. Most conversation about climate change has been around global average temps raising in C. Further, switching that back and forth and doubling it for F would be seen as manipulative by people that don’t want to hear it. On the contrary, the Times’s US audience (probably their main audience) thinks of body temp, which this is, in F. To add further, the audience and writers that want to share cool, new dinosaur fact and the group that does an update on global warming are different people and operate and think differently around these specific things in these specific contexts. Of course it would be easier to add the letter, but I can definitely see why it wasn’t included. | | |
| ▲ | verelo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That’s a reasonable explanation for choosing Fahrenheit. It’s also a pretty good explanation for choosing to label it, since the same paper uses both scales. | | |
| ▲ | t-writescode 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Indeed. It also turns out, as someone else in this thread has noted, NYT's style guides say to not include the unit in headlines, so here we are :) |
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| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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