Learn English – Negative numbers: “minus” or “negative”

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I noticed that when negative number are used in speech, there are two dominant patterns. Taking "-10" as an example, in some cases it is pronounced "negative ten", while in others it is "minus ten".

I could not find any rules for this. A discussion in MathOverflow (which was closed) suggested that using negative was introduced in the US by "New Math" since the 1960's. If this is true, I would expect non-American speakers to mainly use minus (which I think is similar to the usage in most foreign languages), and perhaps senior Americans as well.

I'm not asking for opinions about this argument here. I'm also not looking for explanations or reasons for preference of one or another or the like.

I am looking for

  1. References for authoritative text if there is any

  2. Evidence of usage: I'd like to know how different dialects call negative numbers, and if there are rules or conventions for using e.g. "minus 40" or "negative 40" in different contexts in the same dialect.

Best Answer

Probably this extract from Merriam-Webster's Guide to Everyday Math may help:

Among the more commonly confused mathematical terms, minus and negative have the dubious honor of confounding teachers as well as students. The word minus refers to the operation of subtraction, not to negative numbers.

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