> Not intending any disrespect, but I don't know your
> backgrounds or levels of
> education, and the person who taught that rule to me had a Masters of
> Science in Mathematics, and headed a math department for a
> rather large
> school.  In this instance, if you were in my place, whose
> knowledge would you trust?

Trust a mathematician to define obtuse rules of English grammar, which
apparently only s/he knows about? I guess I don't see where the expertise in
an unrelated area carries over.

> Both of you are saying that you were not taught this rule,
> and that how you
> each would say the words (admittedly matching what I think of
> as the norm)
> differ from the rule.  You are not saying that rule is
> incorrect.  My mother
> was an English teacher, and as such, there are rules of
> grammar that I know
> and follow, of which most people have no knowledge.  This may
> be a similar case.

I'm not saying I was not taught the "rule", or that it is incorrect; I'm
saying I never heard of this usage until it came up in this thread.
Apparently, neither has anyone else. Ergo, I must question its validity.

WRT "correct": go ask 100 randomly-selected people to write down the number
"three thousand four hundred and fifty six" as you speak the words; let us
know how many decimal points you get. Feel free to "bias" the selection
toward a more-educated selection (do the test on a college campus, at a
scientific convention, a MENSA meeting, etc.).

WRT "rules...of which most people have no knowledge": if a "rule of grammar"
exists only in the minds of a tiny fraction of the population, it may be
appropriate to question both its value and its existence as a "rule". For
example, I hate the word "appendixes". However, almost any time I use the
"correct" term "appendices", I get asked what I'm talking about. Am I the
only "correct" person in the area, and the other three thousand people
around me are "wrong"? I have to reluctantly admit that "drift" has made the
former not only acceptable/"correct", but the norm. In the case of the
number, we haven't, so far, even identified a time when that usage was the
norm.

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