Hey! I follow you on twitter and you're one of my favorite accounts c: So, I was wondering when I say something like "I walked 1.8 miles", do I mean "I walked 1.8 mile" or was I correct the first way?
Hey!
Since 1.8 > 1, we would say, “I walked 1.8 miles.”
Similarly, using fractions, we would say, “I ran one-and-a-half miles yesterday.”
However, if we were to use compound adjectives, we would say and write the following:
a 1.8-mile drive
a 26-minute episode
a 432-page book
a three-hour documentary
The hyphen is necessary; it shows that the two words (e.g, “1.8” and “mile”) form one adjective. We also use the singular form of the noun. It looks weird but sounds right.
We hope this simplistic explanation answers your question. If it doesn’t, tweet us. (This would be a good topic to discuss on Twitter.)
Cheers.