Financial Malaprops: misused & confused words

JimmyTheWig

an Mb is 1/8th the size of an MB

As per selimap's suggestion of reading the detail to determine if something is truly assurance or insurance, I suggest you do the same with MB/Mb. I would not take it for granted that the lowercase b always means bits and the uppercase B always means bytes. The context is more relevant than the case, I would say.

John_Pierpoint

gagamike wrote: »

What is the difference between an Investment trust and Unit trust.

Thanks

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=investment+trust+define




Investment Trust

A company quoted on the London Stock Exchange that invests its shareholders funds in the shares of other companies, known as closed-end publicly quoted funds in the US. They enable private investors with limited funds to get diversified share ownership without incurring heavy dealing costs and enable investors to get exposure to markets that they may not be able to reach themselves (e.g. to emerging countries). Unlike unit trusts, investment trusts are closed end funds. That is, there is a fixed number of shares in circulation, and the price of those shares is determined like other quoted shares - by supply and demand.
Related Terms...

• Closed End Fund
• Net Asset Value
• Discount
• Premium
• Open Ended Investment Company
• Exchange Traded Fund

bryanb

Here's one that baffled me for the 14 years I worked for the fire service. Inflammable or flammable, what's the difference? Sounds as though they are opposites.

ariarnia

bryanb wrote: »

Here's one that baffled me for the 14 years I worked for the fire service. Inflammable or flammable, what's the difference? Sounds as though they are opposites.

Inflammable and flammable both mean “combustible.” Inflammable is the historical term but was replaced with flammable in certain technical uses because of a belief that the prefix in- might confuse people into thinking "notcombustable". It should be flammable and nonflammable

StephenRoberts

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

As per selimap's suggestion of reading the detail to determine if something is truly assurance or insurance, I suggest you do the same with MB/Mb. I would not take it for granted that the lowercase b always means bits and the uppercase B always means bytes. The context is more relevant than the case, I would say.

Yes context is important. I have to say I think the original article was wrong.

Firstly a bit is a binary digit - a 1 or a 0 and is denoted by a "b"
A byte is a collection of bits, usually 8 bits in most home computers. A byte is denoted by a "B"

The prefix k as in kB refers to Kilo bytes, meaning 1000 bytes
The prefix K as in KB refers to Kilo bytes meaning 1024 bytes

Similarly M can mean 1000x1000 = 1000000, or
M = 1024x1024 = 1048576

The article says that "Megabits [Mb or Mbits] measure data transfer speeds, for example for broadband."

The correct abbreviations for download speeds are Mbit/s or Mb/s or Mbps. Calling it Mbits or Mb a confusing abbreviation as it is correctly interpreted as an amount of memory not a transfer speed.
Calling it "Megs" is even more confusing!

Even more confusingly, when talking about data transfer rates or hard disk sizes, the prefixes k/K, M, G etc often refer to powers of 10, not powers of 2, e.g. 1000, 100000, 1000000000. In the case of transfer speeds I think it's a telecommunications convention. In the case of hard disks, it's a case of manufacturers trying to make their disks sound bigger.

Lookup Byte and Data Rate Units on wikipedia for more information. If buying broadband, be sure you know what the retailer means by 7 megs download speed, 'cos frankly, it could mean a load of things!

flying_teddy

I'm confused by the financial phrase 'honourable bankers'.

In fact, i've never heard anyone anywhere say it.

JDPower

Cashback used to confuse me given that the cashback you get from a cashback website is completely different from the cashback you're offered when using a credit card in a store. I knew what cashback sites were but no-one ever explained what credit card cashback was when I first got a card (cue much confusion on my part when asked if I wanted cashback for the first few times as I simply didn't know what they were offering)

johnfthetraveller

One of the biggest malapropisms in use, almost everywhere someone is selling..... "Up to".

Trade this in, and you'll get "up to" £150 back (but only 1 in 10,000 get that amount back).

Buy this and save up to 50% (but there's only one item with 50% off, and that's because no-one wants it).

I have my own offering! If you give me £100, I'll give you "up to" £1000 back the next day. (I'll actually only give you £10 back, but I didn't lie, did I)?

flapjack_2

When I worked for a short while at John Lewis, this one initially didn't sound like a selling point at all.
For me what's implied by 'never knowingly undersold' is "never knowingly sold for less money than we reckon we can get away with flogging it for".
It was only on reading the small print I realised that the John Lewis definition of "never knowingly undersold" was "If you can find it cheaper anywhere else we'll automatically drop the price and refund you the difference".
Though practically speaking, as a consumer you still have to do some legwork personally to make that a good deal, so perhaps my first guess wasn't so wide of the mark.
Asda have a similar offer, but who can honestly be bothered to trawl round 2 supermarkets a week comparing prices on everything they buy just to present their findings at the Asda customer service desk?

VoucherMan

johnfrith wrote: »

One of the biggest malapropisms in use, almost everywhere someone is selling..... "Up to".

One big guilty party is Tesco Clubcard.

Worth UP TO 4 x the amount.

The amount of articles and forum posts I see claiming 100 points worth £4.00 in rewards, completely forgetting the UP TO bit.

I've found very few rewards that are actually worth 4 x claimed value.

And yes MSE officials are as guilty as forum posters on this one.