this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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I'm American and I often think we do things wrong...
but not this. First floor on the SECOND floor. It's just wrong.
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 weโd truly be in an architectural pickle.