There really is an xkcd for everything.
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
147 points (98.7% liked)
xkcd
9959 readers
41 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
People who still use body parts for measurement.....
By a square inch, they much mean a column of infinite height extending upwards. Saying they consume the grassy surface of Australia is a dramatic underestimate.
Always bothers me that I can't trust 90% of people (myself included) to properly state area, square feet or feet squared, very different scales.
Square feet are feet squared.
3 square feet are 3 1x1 feet, 1/3rd of a square yard. 3 feet squared is a square yard, 3x larger than 3 sqft.
Unless I'm missing your sarcasm.
Also the purpose of this xkcd
Edit to add, a 600 square foot studio apartment (about 3% of an acre) is much smaller than the 600 foot squared lot that a mcmansion will sit on. (About 9 acres)
I believe "feet squared" and "feet, squared" is the discrepancy here.
The unit ft^2 is pronounced "feet squared" and is equivalent to sq. ft.
No need to add the comma if you say it properly, feet squared are not squared feet, quantifier (3) adjective (square) noun (feet) vs quantifier (3) noun (square) affective (feet), it's the order of operations in the English language, one is quantifying the distance of the edge, while the other is quantifying how many individual edges (squares) of set distance (feet) you have.
I am not writing it with any discrepancy, though I do get tripped up when talking about it, but generally nobody calls anyone on it, except that's when expensive projects go boom sometimes.
Read out loud 3sqft and 3'^2,
First one: 3 square feet
Second one: 3 feet (foot? If you're pedantic) squared (square if you're a pedant)
Read out loud "three squared" and 3^2
Honestly a special name for area units wouldn't be awful
Same goes for volume. People use cubic meters, but I would prefer to use liters instead.
Hectare
The ones in my garden only eat round inches.