[texhax] (OT) English native speaker needed -- translation problem

[Haines Brown]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2011 at 03:13:16PM +0200, Susan Dittmar wrote:
> Hi folks!
> 
> I need help with a small matter of how to phrase something "correcly".
> It will be part of a highly official document, and I feel quite
> uncomfortable with the translation we paid for with respect to this little
> thing. I am sure one of you can help me.
> 
> How would one write---as short as possible---"on page 31 and those
> following"?
> 
> In German, this would be "Seite 31 ff".

Susan, I understood your question a little differently than the 
replies you've received so far. If it is how to say "on page 31 and 
those following" as briefly as possible without abbreviations, then it 
could be "on page 31 and following". Your translation seems to be good 
English, but the "those" seems a bit unconventional and redundant. It 
also appears to be conventional to reduce it in some contexts even 
more as ", 31 and following", with "on page" implied, but I'm not sure 
of its propriety in formal English. I'm a native American "English" 
speaker.

There seems to be no consensus on whether in English numbers should be 
written out rather than expressed as digits. One rule is that any 
number after ten or twelve should be written out, but there's another 
convention that says that any number that can be conveyed by one or 
two words should be written out: "thirty one". But if brevity is the 
goal, then there seems nothing wrong with "31". However, my impression 
is that in legal documents, it would be written out.

Haines