"Sounds awkward"

[JDWhang]

Just got a rejection for a sentence that refers to a file as being "several gigabytes large." No assertion that this is grammatically incorrect, just "awkward." Seems like a pointless nitpick as well as a waste of both my and the editors' time, but maybe someone else can shed a light of the grammar of file sizes.

[tayalltheway]

That's a tough one because it does sound awkward to me too, but I don't know how to fix it... Depending on the context, do you need the word "large"? You might just be able to say the file is several gigabytes and leave it at that.

[JDWhang]

I wound up saying that it would require several gigabytes of data. I thought about just saying that it's "several gigabytes," but that seems like it would be improper. To use an example with another unit, I would say that someone is ten feet tall, not that they're ten feet.

[Lysis]

Would the sentence make sense if you took out the "large?"

Like "such and such a file increases several gigabytes..."


I write all tech too and probably my biggest kick backs are "awkward" too or the dreaded "wordy" message. :^)

[JDWhang]

I write all tech too and probably my biggest kick backs are "awkward" too or the dreaded "wordy" message. :^)

I write a lot of Internet articles and phone reviews and I'm suddenly flooded with those since the new year. Might have to ditch the phone reviews altogether now that mentioning specs makes it read "like something out of your average technical manual." Guess I'll just write about how the phone makes me feel.

[Lysis]

lol yeah, my How To articles can sometimes buy me some revisions!

Personally, I've found keeping it as simple as possible works. Once I start to get fancy is when they kick me! The problem is that sometimes a simple How To can be the same as other sites because there is only one way to do x with y. So, I try to be wordy to explain things in a unique way, and that's when I get those revisions.

I feel ya, man!

[ReneeF]

I would have said "several gigabytes in size..."

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/amount.html

Kinda reminds me of this little directive in their extended guidelines.