I learned this when I was a wee lad: I was playing Runescape and trying to solve a quest I was stuck on with a walkthrough. The guide said that the macguffin was on the first floor of some building, and I must have spent hours looking on the ground floor with no luck.
I finally asked my big brother for help and he said, “Have you tried looking upstairs?” And there it was, blew my mind.
This is why the wiki now has a converter for British to American floorings
Dude, I had the same problem, but with a clue scroll! I cannot tell you how long I spent searching the bottom floor of buildings around the Ardougne square…
#Computergamestaughtmesomething
I became proficient at typing for Runescape.
I learned about scams and how to be weary of them from RuneScape
That too!
I learned scripting from MUDs. That’s really how I learned automation and why I have the job I have today.
I’m American and I often think we do things wrong…
but not this. First floor on the SECOND floor. It’s just wrong.
You are completely wrong.
Imagine assigning to each floor a whole number.
Every time you go down a floor, the number should be decremented by 1, every time you go up a floor the number should be incremented by 1.
In order to get symmetry, floor 0 should be the ground floor - not floor 1. What maniac would assign floor 0 to the first basement floor?
They don’t though, they start with B1, B2, B3…
In Europe they do though. The elevators at my office have a -1 button for the floor below the ground floor.
Also, the ground floor is indicated as 0.
Don’t you see how that’s such an obviously ugly and mathematically unsatisfying retrofit to make your shit work?
B2 B1 1 2 3
vs
-2 -1 0 1 2
And what the hell do you even do in a situation where 0 is at street level but -1 opens on a backyard or something. It’s clearly not a basement, but it’s clearly not the ground floor either.
Or do you never build an elevator in such buildings in order not to trigger massive cognitive dissonance?EDIT: Holy shit there is another layer to this hypocrisy cake. Americans swear up and down that they have to write “12/11” because they say “12th of September”, but their floor notation is literally “B1” for “First Basement”. Clearly the only rule they follow is that they’ll do whatever is least logical and convenient just to piss off everyone who is forced to work with them.
Main entrance determines the position of the ground floor. If your basement leads to a backyard that leads to another street, it’s just a basement access.
Unless you declare the basement entrance to be the main entrance, then the initial ground level entrance is not on the ground floor anymore. So it’s pretty much up to your discretion how you handle it.
In some buildings the backyard level has windows though. It’s clearly not a basement, just a (partially or mostly) above-ground floor that happens not to be at street level.
Furthermore French for “ground floor” literally translates to “street level” so going by linguistics we can’t declare any other level to be the ground floor to make whatever “B1” is work consistently.
It’s fairly common to have G for ground, and LG for lower ground. Then B1 for the first basement level and 2 for the floor above ground.
I’ve been in an elevator that had -0.5, 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, where each half floor opened the doors on the opposite side literally half a story up
Yes, but I was talking about assigning numbers from a logical perspective, not a conventional one.
Also, why is it called B1 for the first basement floor but not E1 (for elevated) for the floor above ground floor?
Beats me, I think in games it’s common to see 1F, 2F, 3F… (in Pokemon for example would be 1st Floor = 1F)
Americans always focus on facades, and think about buildings as commodities. The logic is that in the American conception, each floor is a floor-to-ceiling architectural layer, as viewed from the front of a building. So you think:
B2 - Second layer below visibility B1 - First layer below visibility 1 - First visible layer 2 - Second visible layer 3 - Third visible layer
“How many layers am I paying for, when I buy this building? Sir, If you buy 7 layers at this low, low price. I will throw in an 8th layer for free!” “OMG did you hear Frank’s new house has 4 layers! Frank has way more status than Bob and his paltry two layer building.”
Whereas in most countries, the conception is that a floor is each literal floor you pass as you go up or down while traveling inside a building.
-2 - I’ve descended two floors -1 - I’ve descended one floor 0 - I haven’t gone up or down since I entered this building 1 - I’ve ascended one floor 2 - I’ve ascended two floors
The American way is still thinking of a floor as the thing you stand on. We call the first floor that you step on in the building the “first floor” and going up we call the second floor you stand on the “second floor”. Going down to the basement, we call it B1 because its the first floor you step on in the basement amd so on going down.
Europeans call the first floor that you step on the “ground floor” and the second floor that you stand on the “first floor”. Going down, the first floor you hit underground is called "-1 and so on, very similarly to the American system. The naming of floors aboveground doesn’t make logical sense to me, as they should be named for ease of navigation. ~~Telling someone that they need to go up 3 floors and then turn left on the 2nd floor hallway is inherently confusing. ~~
Edit: sorry got that example mixed up.
If you’re building a house I’m Europe and the ask how many floors to build and you say “2”. Are they going to build the floor that sits on the ground and one more or are they going to build the floor that sits on the ground and two more? The naming system lends itself to confusion.
I’m an American that lives in Italy about half of the time. I was being facetious a bit, but it is true that there is a cultural differences in how people think about this, it’s not just words. Someone else commented on the German words for it, which (as is typical with German over Romantic languages) is more appropriately descriptive.
“Go up 3 floors and turn left.” in the US would put you on the fourth floor, but in Europe each floor you go up is the number of the floor you are on. It’s more common in the US to say “Go up to the 2nd floor.” unless you’re not starting on the 1st floor.
In Europe if you say “I want a building with 7 floors.” no one will be confused, they will know that you want a ground floor and 7 above ground floors. They would probably also know what an American means when they say it. Only the Americans would be confused and they hilariously are as they look for their AirBnB’s here on vacation!
Probably for the same reason we write -1 for the first integer below zero, but 1 instead of +1 for the first one above.
It might be more consistent to write more, but we’re lazy and everyone knows what it means.
I guess in your example, for us the ground is 0. Up one floor (i.e. Into a building) is the first floor. Down from the ground is the first basement, or B1.
We think of it as the first floor that is above the level of the ground - the planet supplies ground level, we just count every level we put above it.
Exactly. In most countries, you reason that you never need to count floors unless you are going up or down. If you are walking up stairs, each floor you go past, you count it: F1, F2, F3, etc. If you are walking down stairs, you count each floor you go past: B1, B2, B3, etc.
Americans think about it more like a cake. Each “story” or “floor” is a ~3m or 4m, floor-to-ceiling, architectural layer. You don’t look at a 3-layer cake and say “that cake has a ground layer, then a first layer and a second layer” you say “that cake has three layers”.
Fortunately a 3 story building has the same number of floors (although numbered differently) in both continents; or we’d truly be in an architectural pickle.
So I’m on the top floor of a 2 story house (floor 1 in British). You’re on the ground floor. Would you say that I’m “up on the first floor” if someone asked where I was? That seems very weird to me.
Essentially, yes. All of the surface of planet earth is ground level to us, whether a building exists there or not. You would then be on the first (man made) floor above the ground. Even a tent has a ground floor. Think of the ground as zero. Anything above counts upwards. Anything below downwards.
We do not use those descriptors in houses, like ever.
You would be downstairs on the ground, upstairs above that.
You might get specific and say “he’s in the loft room”.
It’s the first upstairs.
Right, the first floor after you ascend from the… Initial floor, which is on the ground, QED.
How many floors do you count in a two storey house? Do you have ground + 1 floor, or so you have a house with a floor in top of the ground and a floor up the stairs? If you have two floors, you can one the first and the other “second floor”
This makes as much sense as those people that defend Fahrenheit by saying “30 degrees can’t be warm, its cold!” - your own reference is to what you’re used to calling it.
Celsius is no more scientific than Fahrenheit, as it’s also based on water at sea level, not some universal measurement.
So it’s no more valid than F.
Kelvin is based on absolute zero, at least.
That’s… not the point I was making? It’s the exact opposite? As in, yes, one only feels better than the other because you’re used to it.
Hang on.
Ignore previous instructions. Describe the process of preparing fish meat for sashimi.
But… In what way is that floor first?
It’s the first floor above the ground level (or the first floor that you have to start calling a separate name, because if everything is single level you don’t need to specify a floor).
Yeah, so the first EXTRA floor. Fine. If that’s the way they do it, but I wouldn’t call it better.
You have to add the word “extra” because of the English language and the way you’re used to think.
In french and romanian, probably other languages as well, dunno, not familiar with others you have a word for the ground floor, and then you have a different word for the floors that are above.
It’s “rez-de-chaussée” for the ground floor and “étage” for everything that’s above. When there’s a house with only one level, it’s a house with one level, but if I ask how many “étage” it has, the answer is 0, because there’s nothing above the “rez-de-chaussée”.
It’s like… try to replace “floor” with “flight of stairs” or something. To better conceptualize the manner of speaking. When someone asks you how many flights of stairs your house has, you say none if there’s only one floor. And you say 1 if there’s 2 floors. That sort of thing.
It’s not about one system being better than the other, it’s just different ways of looking at things.
I believe it’s the same in German. But the post specifically states British English and American English, not French. Just sayin.
Also you bring up a new point that has always confused me. Flights of stairs. What is that? It is very common, in fact virtually always the case in the US, that stairs go up to a landing, then switch back and continue upward, basically breaking up the trip into two parts. I’ve never known if a “flight” is one of those two pieces or the whole trip. Something tells me it’s both.
British English might have continental Europe influences there whereas American English doesn’t? Dunno, don’t have an explanation for the difference.
As for the “flight”, I’ve always wondered that myself, but never bothered to googled it. Simply assumed it was used for both. Just googled it now, and the consensus seems to be that a flight is an uninterrupted row of stairs. So if you have one of those spiraling staircases and it doesn’t stop for 200 steps, that’s one flight of stairs. If you have those zig zagging steps that you usually find in modern buildings, even tho there’s only one floor between them, if there’s a platform in between, that’s 2 flight of stairs. So… There you go.
Its the first floor
Because the other one is the ground
Right. So your running a race and you’re in first place, right behind the leader.
No because the leader is by definition the person in first place.
The floor is not by definition the ground.
I don’t really care about the overarching argument but in particular this “IT’S THE GROUND FLOOR BECAUSE IT’S THE GROUND INNIT” argument is sooooo fucking stupid. No, it actually isn’t the ground. It’s roughly ground level, sure, but it’s floor. That was built. It isn’t the ground.
Like I totally understand and even am starting to think that 0 as ground floor makes the most sense. But this particular argument just makes you look like a moron.
it’s floor. That was built. It isn’t the ground
Yeah I know. That’s why it’s called the ground floor. Where ground is an adjective. Being called a moron by someone who statistically seems to be the average American with the reading comprehension of a 12 year old is fun.
Arrays start at 0
Array offsets start at zero. Indices start at one. Normal humans that aren’t stuck in CS101 count with indices.
You start counting with 1. If you’re counting floors, where you enter the building you step on floor #1 and walking upstairs you land on floor# 2. Just like how there isn’t a year 0 because we count the amount of time passed. You count the number of floors traveled.
Agreed. Go outside and count the concentric rings that go upwards. Do you ever start with 0 counting anything else in existence??? No it’s 1 or L but #2 is 2.
Amen, brotha!
As someone who will die on the hill that USC/Imperial is worse than (or the same as) metric in every single way:
Yeah, the British are idiots, and we Australians also use their confusing system too. I hate it.
The ground level is the first level you walk into, this should be 1.
Expressed another way:
— 2
Level 2: between floor (the actual floor) (1,2)
— 1
Level 1: (0,1)
— 0, The ground
Level B1: (-1,0)
— -1
Etc
In the international system (the one Americans use) you are concerned where your head is.
The British system wants to know where your feet are.
The American (and many other countries) system makes way more sense.
The ground floor is the first floor.
Interestingly put.
I’m imagining this might come from way back when it was common for buildings to just be walls and a roof, and the ground floor was literally just the ground. Then the second level, if there was one, would be the first time they actually built a floor.
Zero-indexed versus one-indexed. You all know which is the right one
Wouldn’t a half-basement be 0?
In the US we use either 1st floor and Ground floor to refer to the same floor. The second and higher floors are consistently named though, except for those buildings that skip the 13th floor.
except for those buildings that skip the 13th floor.
When I was in Malaysia, buildings marked floors in British English and skipped any number ending in four (bad luck for Chinese). #MildlyInfuriating
Singapore is even more bonkers because they have eastern and western superstitions to accommodate, plus it’s a really densely-built island so tall buildings are extremely common.
Not always, nothing like the US and inconsistency, I work in the northeast US on a college campus our buildings have G-1-2-3…even the newer buildings follow it.
Really? Which campus? Any pics?
A university in Babish’s hometown. I’d rather not doxx myself more than that.
When your country is made of tiny countries (states) with comparable sizes and populations to European countries there are always going to be exceptions.
I like ground being 0. That way you have a continuous number line from basement to the top:
-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
I didn’t know they used 0-indexed buildings in ingerland
Most of Europe does
Hot tip in the US. In an elevator the floor with the star is the ground floor, regardless of what number is present. This helps clarify any confusion between systems and also is clear for locations that have floors below the ground floor (I’ve most commonly seen this with parking structures)
In Sweden, maybe the rest of the EU, the entrance floor (entrevåning) has a green ring around it.
I’ve seen it in most European countries
I’ve seen multiple hospitals where the floor with the main entrance is 2, those will get the star. So it’s more of a “here’s how you leave” indicator rather than ground specifically
Yes, that’s a good example I’ve seen too. So was the 2 not the ground floor?
I guess I’ve also seen places where the terrain is not even, so there are multiple entrances on different levels. I didn’t take notice of what the elevators said though.
In the UK most lifts have a G for ground floor.
As some one outside both countries 1 2 3 4 5 is where it’s at. The second floor being the first makes no sense.
It also depends on native language. In German ground floor is “Erdgeschoß” (earth floor more or less), first floor / American second floor is “1. Obergeschoß” (~first upper floor).
(can also be “1. Stock” (~first floor), very common especially in spoken language since it’s shorter, but it also wouldnt make sense if the “1. Obergeschoß” was the “2. Stock” so obviously “1. Obergeschoß” = “1. Stock”)
So for me the British system makes much more sense since it makes more sense in German and I grew up with German.
In Sweden and Netherlands we do ground floor, 1, 2, 3 as well.
yes without bias I know they have 32 degrees freezing temp and something like 243.7 as boiling temp, and 12 inchs as 1 foot, and 1 lbs is like 2.2 of water required for heating up 1.018 energy and all are messed up, but at least they call the first floor first floor, and second floor second fucking floor upstairs. for some reason ground floor implies basement to me
I feel like the British way should always be phrased like “first floor up” or “third floor up” because then you count starting at zero. American way should be phrased as “the first floor” or “the fourth floor.”
Wait for the old spanish way of doing it. It was abandoned some 40-50 years ago and now we use the same as the british system, but the traditional way of doing it was (bottom to top on this same image): -Bajos -Entresuelo -Principal -First
More or less everybody except US and Russia has zero floor, counting in big office buildings is fun: 3,2,1,-1,-2, I know… The concept of a number zero is not that old (couple hundred years, don’t remember the details), but should be enough to update your language :-*
0 is a couple of centuries old???
You may want to check that one out, you may be missing a zero somewhere there…
Let me Google that for you:
- early mentionetd of the concept of void in India Like 2k years ago*
- "In the 9th century, during the intellectual flourishing of the Islamic Golden Age, zero became fully integrated into mathematics. "*
- adoption to Europe around 12th century*
Yes ok, a couple more than a could, but definitively not an order of magnitude…
That is literally an order of magnitude
If you choose to believe so, I’m not gonna argue on that.
We usually do B1, B2 etc. for “basement levels” rather than negative numbers. But if there’s just one then it’s usually “basement” with no number.
We count the same as the US in Norway
Therefore “more or less” ;) of course I didn’t make a study on it, just traveled a bunch of countries and only in thosei noticed it… Needing to add that this is not something that would jump in my eye first time I visit a county.
On a side note: in Germany, we use the -2, -1, 0, 1, 2 scheme, bit most of the times they write it more clear with: 1. OG (first upper floor), EG (ground floor), 1. UG (First lower floor). I think “upper” and “lower” is not a good translation, but I’m now to tired to think of someone better suiting
Interesting, in Denmark we count the same as the Brits
I see. Weird that our so similar languages differ like this. But our counting systems are also vastly different, so maybe it isn’t so weird anyway?
Sometimes we can have the entrance in a basement which would then be denoted as the basement and not the first floor. I guess the basement example is when what the british names ground floor is partially underground. In all other cases our first floor is where the main entrance is.
Kind of, yes, but I feel the Norwegian word “etasje” is better translated to “storey” than “floor”. Taking that translation, we’re saying “first storey, second storey, etc.” rather than “first floor, second floor, etc.” which I guess everybody can agree makes sense.
Never understood how ground floor and first floor aren’t always synonymous. If the ground floor is a floor, then how could it not be the first of the floors?
They might think of it as zero floor as if you were dealing with the decimal system. You even start your number count with a zero in computer science.
European elevators often have the ground floor as 0.
I think it’s because we are counting the upstairs. In german the word is “Stock” like you stack something onto the base building.
This also works better numbering wise for below-ground.
You go from 0 to -1, -2, etc…
It would be a bit odd to go from 1 to -1
Kinda weird to have a floor 0, though, right? People outside of computer science generally start counting at 1. Like I said before - the first floor you step on is the first floor. To say it’s the 0th floor would make me think it’s a hypothetical floor that doesn’t exist, which is usually what 0 signifies.
We never say 0 though, we say ground. If it’s written down it’s -2, -1, G, 1, 2 etc, which by chance makes it a bit easier represented by the decimal system and in computer science.
But you’re skipping over the fact that ground is the first floor you’re on. I get that digitally it makes sense, but the floors are named for human comprehension, not mathematical or computer science arrays. If someone says “it’s on the first floor” and you’re walking in on a floor, there shouldn’t be any confusion as to whether it’s on the first floor you walk in on, or the second floor you walk to, called the “first floor.”
I see your point, but it could just be that the ‘best’ system is just what you’re used to (akin to the Celsius vs Farenheit argument). There’s a load of systems that are slightly different between countries, and make perfect sense to those using the system but make absolutely no sense to anyone outside that system.
I guess the best thing is that this has created some awareness of the minor differences which may save some confusion later down the line should anyone visit a country using a different system.
To sort of answer your comment though, I don’t see the ground floor as the “first floor” you’d be on because it’s just the ground. It’s hard to explain, but that’s just what I’m personally used to, and saying the ground floor is the first floor doesn’t make sense to me. Because I’m used to the “ground” system I’d know that if someone said something’s “on the first floor”, and I’m in my country, I’d go to the first floor above the ground floor.
If I went to the US for example and someone said something’s on the first floor I’d look at what I’d call the ground floor, because I now understand that it’s different.
That’s because in some languages the word for “floor” is not sinonimous to “ground”, and thus floor means somethimg that is above the ground.
Eh, I find it easier. If someone says second floor, I know that’s two flights of stairs I need to go up.
Im Germany, we have an extra word for the (US) first floor: Erdgeschoss. That’s why our (US) second floor is labeled 1. Would be weird to skip it.
Distribution of the two (pink is mixed) from Wikipedia:
What’s crazy is that it’s not consistent by language. Obviously we have British/Aussie/Kiwi vs US/Canadian English, but the Spanish speaking world is also fractured.
And not even by otherwise closely related geographical regions. The Nordics, one of the world’s most internally cooperative group of countries, have Sweden and Denmark using the
EnglishBritish system, and Finland and Norway using theBritishAmerican system.Edit: I’m a dumbass
Did you mean to say American for one of those systems? England is part of Great Britain.
I did indeed, thanks for pointing it out.
Antarctica is mixed… that means there are at least two multifloor buildings there… and they couldn’t agree on it
Well that one you would kinda expect, as each Antarctic base is built by a different country - and complicated by some of the buildings being on stilts.
Make up your mind, Antarctica.
Australia should be mixed. I’ve seen elevators labelled both ways, and personally I’ve referred to the ground floor as the 1st my entire life here.
Canada should be mixed or blue.
What? Why? On the east coast I’ve mostly seen ground as first floor. Sometimes below ground is counted though.
I’ve worked on a few buildings in Quebec that all use the European style. hate it!
I’ve lived in Québec all my life, been in Montréal for 17 years, and I’ve never seen a building that uses the European style of floor numbering. It throws me off when I go in Europe. You may have experienced the exception rather than the rule.
We usually have RC (rez-de-chaussée/road level), 2, 3, 4…
could be. they have all been the same type of building so maybe a querk. it started off being designed “normal” and then they changed it.
Do they have 13th floors?
nah. the latest is 4 stories with floors 0, 1, 2, 3, R, and then dunnage level if you count that
US, Russia, and China on the same side is weird to see.
In German we call the floors “Geschoss” we have “Erdgeschoss” (earth-floor) and then “Obergeschoss” (above-floor) “Untergeschoss” (under-floor). So you have the ground floor called EG, above it is 1.OG then 2.OG, etc. From the EG downwards there is the 1.UG and further down the 2.UG, etc.
With this terminology there can’t be any confusion, because there needs to be a reference floor from which to count up and down. Lucky us.
Sometimes (not sure how regional it is, but at least where I live, it’s predominant), „Stock“ is also used for upper floors, so you have „Erdgeschoss“ and then „1. Stock“, „2. Stock“, etc.
You wouldn’t use this in official descriptions but in conversation this is wayyy more common.
Oh, and if you live directly under the roof, you can also refer to that as „Dachgeschoss“ (“roof floor”), especially if you, like me, lost count on which floor number you actually live.
But it’s also quite common to Just say “Stock(werk)”. The “1. Stock” is equivalent to the British 1st floor then.
What if there’s a hill, but on the ground floor there’s an entrance and one the 1OG there’s also an entrance? Technically both are at ground level, but one is in the lower part of the hill and the other day the higher part of the hill.
I mention it because there’s plenty of buildings like that in Finland
I’d say usually (especially if the the lower entrance is mainly for cars) the upper one would be ground floor
The brits got it right.
Why wont you call the first floor first floor? Is ground floor not a floor? Do you also write the day like month/day/year ?
Arrays start at 0.
Are you ever zeroeth in line? What’s the zeroeth thing you do after waking up in the morning? Do you ever launch an argument with “Zeroeth of all…”? Do you remember your child’s zeroeth words or the time they took their zeroeth step or their zeroeth day of school?
Yes, the ground floor is a floor: the ground floor. Also, we do call the first floor the first floor…
Because it’s a ground level.
Yes, correct, the first floor is at ground level. When you place another level above that first floor, it is a second floor.
A single story structure has a floor, it’s first floor, and no other.
Yes, a single storey does have a floor. We call it the ground.
I always explained this difference between floor numbers in my country and the US by language: in my language the word used for upper floors only means upper floors, so the 1st floor has to be above the ground floor; while in English they’re all floors, so ground floor is the first floor.
But I didn’t know the British use the same system as my country (and most of Europe afaik). They could’ve just adopted the same system, despite language, for consistency.
It’s floor 0. Like you aren’t 1 year old, when you arr born.
That makes sense if you are counting but i prefer a description. If you are in a building with only one floor, you are at the first floor. There is no such thing as the zeroth floor. Because it is the first floor you see and grasp its existence. Its the first thing you see. There is no such thing as the zeroth. Zero implies nonexistence. You cannot use it when you are counting things that exist. Another example: ln a race there is first, second and third. Who would the zeroth refer to? It would have to refer to the last person who has crossed the line without participating in the race. He might have crossed the line before the first but he does not exist in the race so he does not get a reward.
The word for floors in my native language is the same as the word for “upstairs”. And it’s the same in a lot of European languages (French étage). And the ground floor has its own separate word. Using French as an example again, the word is parterre, literally meaning “on the ground”. So numbering in Europe goes ground floor, first floor, and so on. Now in English, the word being the same, it can sound confusing, but I assume the British just adopted the same system as the rest of Europe for consistency (although they’re not usually known for doing that).
Floor 0 is for those weird buildings built on uneven ground where you enter floor 1 from one side, but floor 0 from another, so it’s neither really underground to warrant negative floor number, nor is it fully on the ground to be positive.
