Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2019 August 13

= August 13 =

Flag of Japan
I was hoping the article on the Flag of Japan would explain this but I don't see it. Apologies if I misunderstood and it is actually in there.

This image which is currently on the front page says "3/5 (of 2)" on the right side. Could someone explain this to me? I'm not understanding the "of 2" part. I get that, if the flag were broken up into fifths, that the sun would be 3 sections high with 1/5 above and below. But what is the "of 2"? Thanks, † dismas †|(talk) 16:27, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * 2 is the overall height. So the circle occupies 3/5 of the flag, or 3/5 of 2 units in total.  The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 16:33, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * That seems like a good explanation but why bother putting "of 2" when that's already specified on the left side? And why would you need to know that it's 3/5 of 2? Is just "3/5" not good enough for some reason? † dismas †|(talk) 17:15, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Because the flag is in the proportions 2:3, so you need to specify which side you are measuring 3/5 of. 3/5 of the long side is different than 3/5 of the sort side.  -- Jayron 32 18:20, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * You can visual see which side is referred in the drawing w/o the "2". The "2" makes it just confusing.--TMCk (talk) 18:30, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest just writing "1.2", which is 3/5 of 2. For greater clarity "0.4" could be written above and below it, this being the height of the all-white band.  Note that the file claims it has "no text", and in the description  "without language-specific text": therefore the English word "of" is inappropriate anyway. --76.69.116.4 (talk) 06:01, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I would suggest writing "3/5 of the short side". Wikipedia only gets better when people fix it.  If you find it confusing, you're allowed to make it less so.  No one here would stop you.  -- Jayron 32 12:47, 14 August 2019 (UTC)


 * If I were writing it, I'd try to make everything an integer: thus the height is 10, the width is 15, and the diameter of the roundel is 6. —Tamfang (talk) 18:32, 14 August 2019 (UTC)