Rob’s Minor Annoyance of the Week: Saying or Writing “Half a Dozen”
Why do people use the phrase or write “half a dozen” when saying “six” or writing “6″ would suffice? Saying “half a dozen” takes four syllables of breath, saying “six” takes one. Even if you use the phrase because the number of the things that you are talking about is not exactly six, instead of saying “about half a dozen”, you could just as well say “about six”.
Here’s a handy dandy table:
Even Google tries to set you straight. Here’s what Google gives you if you if you search for “half a dozen”:
So save your breath or 11 characters of typing and just go with “6″! 
I completely agree with you. Why waste your time and breath saying half a dozen than just saying six??? You have proved an amazing point and even google agrees with you!! You should try to get the egg companies to quit calling it half a dozen or start your own egg company and say six eggs rather than half a dozen!
PS I got a new camera today. It’s a canon and its really good
I am forced to make an unfortunate announcement. I saw the Dark Night last Saturday and did not see Aunt Mona in the movie. I was dissapointed.
Yeah, I saw the Dark Knight last Thurs. and I didn’t see her either. I bet that we’ll be able to see her on the DVD if we play it slow enough. She was in the Harvey Dent fundraiser scene at the Bruce Wayne penthouse. The background peoople in that scene were very blurry unfortunately.
Mary bailed on me at the last second when I saw it, so she hasn’t seen it. Therefore, we are both seeing it tonight.
I was an awesome movie though, didn’t you think?
Yeah it was really amazingly done. I know!!! All the extras were blurred out I was so disappointed. Hey, I hope she likes the movie, though. I thought it was awesome! Heath Ledger did really well. I thought he did the best. I laughed when he said I’ll make this pencil disappear then shoved it in the guys head.
Half a dozen is correct. You missed suttle perspective. The term “dozen” and “half a dozen” represent a unit of product that contains 6 or 12 items in it. For example:
In a typical grocery store there are two sizes of eggs, dozen size and half a dozen size. Saying 6 size or 12 size just feels wrong.
Also, dozen seems to be easier to say then twelve. Half a dozen was just an extenion on that. Are you also against “couple” and “single”?