Yeah, I concede,,,
If Ken says his is 22% of one caliber or maybe 220 thousanths of one '"', I won't argue the fact "
." I'll let Ed Matunas do it for me.
Note: About cartridge names. For years it has been the practice of many publishers to place a decimal point in front of a cartridge name, i.e. .30-06 Springfield. This practice, despite widespread use, is erroneous. A cartridge name is a proper name equally as is Ed Matunas. It makes no more sense to print .30-06 Springfield than does to print .Ed Matunas.
I'm truly sorry for those not in the know of the English language mathmatically nor grammatically.
Then pity yourself, my supercilious friend.
This is not a matter of either language (which is spoken sounds, not ink squiggles and spots on paper) or of correctness but of convention that hasn't the rule of law anywhere.
I've discussed this often and at length with my old friend Ed, to whom SAAMI's standard is a golden calf that I do not accept as such. And I'm by no means alone in my disrespect for it.
I have but to go to a few of the many firearms classics on my shelves (just did exactly that, in fact) -- both miltary and civilian, both American and foreign, including books and official cartridge drawings -- that date back far before SAAMI wrought this "rule" of its own. Even some of my old SAAMI cartridge drawings use the decimal in those old cartridge designations.
I've been reading about guns and cartridges since the Thirties, in publications that date back as far as firearms have been designated by caliber. The decimal was integral to the oldest conventional designations. Omission of the decimal is a very recent "rule," very limited in its standardization. Use of the decimal in cartridge and caliber designations
continues to be an honored convention born not of red-neck ignorance but of long- and well established usage.
Cartridge and caliber designations have always been based on mathematical expressions based in turn on the English inch or the European millimeter. If my name were a decimal fraction of an inch -- which "Ed" is not -- the decimal would be appropriate. But I'm not .338 Howell; I'm Ken Howell. Ed is not .338 Matunas, either. And please note that metric cartridges still use the decimal in designations that don't refer to full millimeters.
The decimal has been conventionally "correct" in cartridge and caliber designations as far back as I've researched the matter -- and is still conventionally "correct" in enough modern genres to preclude any universality of the modern SAAMI "rule."
Bias breeds gullibility, which in turn guarantees deception. Blind assumption that SAAMI's very limited "rule" equals universal correctness or is integral to the English language comes from nothing more respectable than sheer deception.
