Talk:Storey

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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Why US system is used in Russia while Russian floor numbering scheme predates the USA itself, even as a theory, by several centuries?!

Came here to ask the same question: why is it called US / North American numbering scheme if it's used in Europe and Asia? Did the US invent it? There's nothing in the article that indicates that the numbering scheme originated in the US. For the European scheme, the article states that it can be traced back to medieval times, but there's nothing on the history of the "US" scheme. For all we know, it might be another European scheme, or an Asian one. I'd suggest to use more neutral naming for the schemes, like "scheme that treats ground floor as separate floor" and "scheme that doesn't treat ground floor as separate floor". Nakonana (talk) 23:14, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to have been a question regarding this 12 years ago as well, with no follow-up. I would agree that there does not appear to be anything to suggest one of the ways of numbering is ‘American’, and calling it such is misleading. 86.16.143.24 (talk) 11:52, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

While I disapprove of this being turned into a redirect without discussion, I agree that changing it to a redirect was a good idea. --RealGrouchy 01:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article was basically a rewording of paragraph 4 and 5 from Floor, so I treated it like a content fork. However, if you'd prefer, we can change it back to an article and send it through WP:AFD. --Bobblehead 01:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I try not to understand all the complex procedures for this type of thing. The end result is the same. I have no objection to status quo/no further action. --RealGrouchy 04:47, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some 60 years ago I was taught that the term "storey" denoted the vertical component of the habitable living space in a structure. The common corruption "story" to denote building levels is but one of many accepted definitions of "story", while there has only been the one definition of the term "storey".

Perhaps someone could check on this and edit the article accordingly. 74.166.84.7 11:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why are we using Chiefly British words on Wikipedia? 68.206.118.66 (talk) 19:52, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The person who writes an article gets first dabs at deciding the language. see WP:ENGVAR. Dmcq (talk) 20:20, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why use Chiefly US varients? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.13.150.25 (talk) 16:35, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Both storey and story are accurate, and since this is an article pertaining to the whole world, both English-language spellings should appear. I just wanted to point out that the British spelling, "storey", is not the common form in Canada, despite what the article says. At best, the UK and US spellings are used equally there.Nojamus (talk) 17:27, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are UK spelling fighters all over this website, putting their astroturf everywhere (such as trying to claim Canadians misspell story). There should be a task force to remove all the specious and fabricated "defenses" of these errors on the site. Cecoppola (talk) 23:34, 9 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Storey is for level, story is for legend. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.30.151.230 (talk) 12:46, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why are Roman numerals even in Romania not used for floor numbers in elevators? --88.77.238.104 20:06, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Err, I hope that's sarcasm...why would Romania be using Roman numerals...? --86.144.174.235 20:16, 15 July 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Good lord, that is a particular type of ignorance not often encountered in the pages of wikipedia. --FreemDeem (talk) 17:07, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll do my best to pitch in here as I can over time, but for now I wanted to at least note some ideas for this article.

• The whole "ground floor is floor 0 / 1" thing is covered about five times in five different ways; it would be good to pare this down and try to come to a definitive conclusion as to what parts of the world use what."

• There's one reference to the ground floor being marked with a star that seems to indicate this is a sometime or whimsical thing. My impression is that at least in the US, it's probably required by fire code. Having a definitive statement (with citation of course) would be useful.

• As the tag says, there need to be lots more references.

• The "Numbering" section has one part that completely lost me:

The principal floor is the floor that contains the chief apartments, whether on the ground floor or the floor above; in Italy they are often on the latter and may be known as the piano nobile. The floor below the ground floor is called the basement even if only a little below ground level, or the lower ground floor; the floor in a roof is known as the attic or the loft.

In the U.S., the expressions one pair, two pair, etc., apply to the stories above the first flight of stairs from the ground (see also carpentry).

My questions: what are "chief apartments" ? Where is this term used? Does this apply only to apartment buildings? Private homes? Some other usage I'm not familiar with? Is this the same as "master bedroom" as used in the U.S.?

In Italy, "they" -- what "they"? The chief apartments again? Is it "they" that are the piano nobile, or the floor they're on? Following the link, I learn it's the name of the floor of a private house, usually a house of the type we'd call a mansion in the US.

The next sentence needs some rephrasing, since it appears to say that something is called the basement even if it's the lower ground floor. I think that's fixed by straightforward copyedit, though.

I'm a U.S. native, and I've never heard the expressions "one pair" or "two pair" to refer to stories, so even if this is correct and I'm the ignorant one here, I would say the article should assume others will be equally clueless -- a reference would be good. Maybe it's regional? The link to carpentry was uninformative.

• The section on "Idiosyncrasies" feels a bit breathless in its apparent surprise that lower building floors might have non-numeric names. I find this to frequently be the case in high-rise buildings, especially hotels: "Mezzanine" is certainly very common, for the reasons given in its article.--NapoliRoma 00:09, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Please consider adding a list or a section of abbreviations for the word "floor" or "etage" in the different contexts/systems. Some buildings are using those to label buttons, doors and etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.47.213.82 (talk) 11:23, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm no expert but 14 feet seems high for a storey on a house. Ceilings are 8 feet and the floor height is mainly determined by the joists which are generally only 1 foot. I think 10 feet is a more common rough estimate for the height of a house storey. Were they thinking of floor thickness of 14 inches? Of course in commercial buildings there is a lot more space in between floors for ducts and such. JPLeonard (talk) 16:18, 10 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

in holland ; a floor that is partial underground , and in other countries can be called the basemant , and wich may or may not contain windows is generaly called the "souterain" and not the basemant.

it is generaly indicated withe -1 or s as it comes below the main floor ( 0 or bg (begane grond)) wich in this case can be some meters above actual street level.

although this floor is moastly half a level above street level ( withe stairs leading up to it ) it is stil calle the ground floor. the word "ground" in this case has nothing to do anymore withe the actual topsoil.

a basment or kelder is generaly a room that is 100% below street level and is located underground and wich has generaly no windows in the side walls. it is generaly numberd after the "souterain" if there is one.

if this same room has some considerable lengthe , and connects 1 part of a building to another , or pases from topsoil to underground and back , then it can be called a "tunnel"

the problem withe the word "tunnel" arises when they are made on topsoil level or above. although failing al the above mentiond requierments it then is stil called a "tunnel"

so ; ground floor = 0 or bg souterain = -1 or s basemant under souterain = -2 or b , k tunnel = -1 or more or 0 , bg or more

it is ferther stated that lesser educated people or ones not in or not related to the building industrie generaly mistakenly call a "souterain" a "basemant" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.151.64.180 (talk) 10:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone expand the chart in the "Numbering" section to include the nomenclature for the first couple stories below ground level, to explain how it works in that direction? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.32.163.170 (talk) 10:06, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

UK: one storey, two storeys US: one story, two stories

81.158.1.233 (talk) 16:34, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody has questioned the statement re omitting 13 from the floor-numbering scheme. I have been in many public buildings which had no 13th floor; I even lived in such a hotel for a year. It used to be common; I don't know about buildings going up now, however.Raymondwinn (talk) 20:28, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Thirteenth floor. Dmcq (talk) 20:55, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Hong Kong section has

3rd floor (and 三樓, 四樓 (literally 4th floor) for old tenant buildings)

which – maybe it's just me – is rather hard to understand, and has the parentheses in the wrong place. I would prefer

三樓 (3rd floor); and 四樓 (4th floor) for old tenant buildings

and similar for the other rows of the table. Unless someone points out that I am being dense, I shall change the table accordingly. Maproom (talk) 20:00, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Now done. Maproom (talk) 21:30, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Still on that table: the Hong Kong column seems rather unnecessary. From what I understand, the British system is used in almost all situations -- whether in English or in Chinese, in speech or in writing. The only exception are the Chinese-character floor *labels* in some old buildings, which follow the American system. So the confusion arises because when someone writes or says "三樓" or "3rd floor" about one of those buildings, he may mean "the floor that we would now call 3rd", or "the floor that has "三樓" written on the wall".
IMHO, this local and temporary idiosyncrasy hardly deserves a column in the table. But then, if that column is removed, the whole table seems rather superfluous. The original table is copied below, just in case. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

British convention	American convention	Hong Kong convention	Japanese convention
3rd floor	4th floor	三樓 (3rd floor); and 四樓 (4th floor) for old tenant buildings	4F
2nd floor	3rd floor	二樓 (2nd floor); and 三樓 (3rd floor) for old tenant buildings	3F
1st floor	2nd floor	一樓 (1st floor); and 二樓 (2nd floor) for old tenant buildings	2F
Ground floor	Ground or 1st floor	地下 (ground floor)	1F or 地上階 (Ground floor)

Well, sure. I shan't mind if someone removes the table. I just feel that while the table is there, it is better to have it comprehensible. Maproom (talk) 10:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What's the justification for the claim that "storey" is the British spelling, while "story" is the US spelling? Both Merriam Webster and the OED list "story" as the primary spelling, with "storey" as a variant, and neither mentions that either use is specific to a particular variant of English.VoluntarySlave (talk) 04:44, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would also like this yo be ansered and fixed

Coke a cola co (talk) 01:06, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's sourced at American and British English spelling differences to the following source:

• Peters, Pam (2002). "storey or story". The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 517. ISBN 0-521-62181-X.

That article also quotes the OED: "The Oxford English Dictionary states that this word is 'probably the same word as story [in its meaning of "narrative"] though the development of sense is obscure.'" —C.Fred (talk) 01:17, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

“Storey” comes from Old French estorée, building. “Story,” a tale or narrative, is a shortened form of history. — RVJ (talk) 01:44, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I believe NZ convention is American usage as well. For a two-storey building, news stories in NZ will claim "second floor" if they mean the upper of the two floors. I believe I once used the British/European usage of "first floor" and confused the colleagues. --JNZ (talk) 06:50, 28 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It varies, many New Zealanders follow British terminology, I happen to work in a building that has (in a lift panel) ground floor and 1st floor above it, my friends also use the term "1st floor" to mean the floor above ground. Style used by newspapers may be different due to several considerations (personal preferences and perceptions of those making editorial decisions, US or Australian majority ownership, compatibility with foreign English-language news sources, etc). 00:20, 12 May 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.173.207.166 (talk)

There is some confusion about how extra floors fit into the numbering system. Historically, buildings in Vienna, Austria were not permitted to be more than five (?) storeys tall. They compensated by calling other floors something else. Nineteenth and early twentieth century buildings had a ground floor, a mezzanine, first floor, Zwischengeschoss (second mezzanine), second floor, third floor, fourth floor, where the mezzanine and the Zwischengeschoss had the same number of rooms, etc., as the numbered floors. The topic probably deserves to be discussed in more depth in the article. samwaltz (talk) 17:20, 14 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've never seen or heard of an elevator using "D" for the basement in an English speaking country. Is this a joke?

I believe the article started off correctly - explaining different terminology in the context of "British English" and "US English", but it doesn't follow that the actual numbering systems are therefore "British" and "US". I believe those parts of the article would benefit from being written from the point of view of two systems, one which has a floor zero equivalent, and one which doesn't. Thoughts? --HighKing (talk) 11:26, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure the offset issue to be clear. I did not understandit.

An offset may be used to accommodate unnumbered floors. For example, in a building with floors labeled G, M, 1, 2, ..., 11 and 12, the 4th room in each of those floors could be numbered 104, 114, 124, 134, ..., 224, and 234, respectively — with an offset of 11 in the floor numbers. This trick is sometimes used to make the floor number slightly less obvious, e.g. for security or marketing reasons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.97.14.22 (talk) 10:18, 21 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The missing 4th floor is called out in Asian countries, but there is no statement calling out the omission of the 13th floor in many American buildings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ddsp4u (talk • contribs) 00:08, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The article states, "The height of each storey is based on the ceiling height of the rooms plus the thickness of the floors between each pain."

Online research to discover exactly what 'pain' means in this context is swamped in discussions of physical pain. The word should either be explained or fixed, in my opinion. LukeT12345 (talk) 20:46, 6 March 2014 (UTC)LukeT12345[reply]

I am not sure where information on the Soviet basement floors counting comes from. In Moscow at least, the floor right below the ground floor would be called a basement (подвал in Russian). Underground floors are normally counted as 1st basement floor (level −1; первый подвальный этаж), 2nd basement floor (level −2; второй подвальный этаж) etc. There is definitely no such thing as «"Ground floor" (0 or G)». Would it be fine if I just correct it? --texnic (talk) 08:50, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How about the term цокольный этаж? It is quite often used in Russia, and it refers to a floor right below первый этаж, and the floor right above первый подвальный этаж. Also Estonian soklikorrus, Finnish pohjakerros, Norwegian underetasje, Lithuanian cokolinis aukštas, and Latvian cokola stāvs, which all refers to a floor above first basement but below first floor. http://www.zarasu15.lt is the example of a Lithuanian webpage containing a floor scheme, where parkingo planas is the Lithuanian basement, cokolinis aukštas is the Lithuanian ground floor (above basement but below first floor), and pirmas aukštas is the Lithuanian first floor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.195.8.152 (talk) 02:31, 27 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that the Lithuanian building has an American floor numbering when numbering the rooms, but using British floor numbering on the floor links and floor plan file names. For example, on http://www.zarasu15.lt/pirmas-aukstas,5.html and http://www.zarasu15.lt/files/pirmas_aukstas.jpg (UK first floor), the room numbers begin with 2 (US second floor, e.g. 215, 223, 243, 263, 265). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.195.8.152 (talk) 06:43, 27 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I can't be the only one who thinks the most prominent idiosyncracy in this subject is that in the American system there is an interval of two, numerically, between floors 1 and -1, even though they're adjacent. Shouldn't this be the first point in that section? 81.109.237.36 (talk) 23:53, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The applied logic is that "0" is the two-dimensional line which is the ground, and all storeys must be either above or below that. Similar to having a year +1 (AD) and a year -1 (BC) but no year 0, because all years are defined as relative to a single point rather than to another year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.51.161.35 (talk) 13:40, 26 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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In Sweden, numbering the storeys differ from building to building. Older houses tend to be 1 = One level up from ground level. Especially if there are no flats in the ground level. The ground level could then be called "BV", and the basement "KV". In newer houses level 1 would normally be the entrance level, sometimes called 1 and sometimes E. Newer apartment houses also tend to have flats in the ground floor, and who would want to live on level 0? When addressing letters, people still write for instance "3 tr" meaning "3 stairs", but that is just an obsolete expression, it still means the storey with number 3, even if ground level (0 stairs) is level 1. For administrative purposes, the government has issued regulations that all flats should be numbered in a standardized way, in which for instance 1002 means level 10 (which is always the ground level) and 02 for the second door from the left. Level 09 would be the basement etc. Anything to get rid of letters, it seems. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.199.140.148 (talk) 13:02, 2 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You can add this to the article if you can find WP:RS, such as a newspaper article referring to historical practices and new government regulations. Reify-tech (talk) 14:30, 2 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The University of Kaiserslautern has another weird system for floor numbering. In most buildings there, counting is started with the basement, which is floor 1. The ground floor is floor number 2, even if there is no basement. 1^st storey above ground floor is number 3 etc.

There is no etymology in this article, and it's really missing. Why "story"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.91.51.235 (talk) 10:01, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In the European system, the first floor is the one above the ground floor, the second floor is above the first floor, and so on, so that the top floor of a building with six floors (including the ground floor) is called the fifth floor, right? Is that building a five-storey building or a six-storey building? Here in North America, we'd call it a six-story building. What would it be called in England or France? The article should say. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 00:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The section Storey#Consecutive number floor designations already contains these words:

In all English-speaking countries the storeys in a building are counted in the same way: a "seven-storey building" is unambiguous, although the top floor would be called "6th floor" in Britain and "7th floor" in America. This contrasts, for example, with French usage, where a 7-storey building is called une maison à 6 (six) étages. Mezzanines may or may not be counted as storeys.  Dr Greg  talk  00:37, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Given that

1. both systems occur outside Europe and North America,
2. the "European system" occurs in 1/3 of the countries in continental North America, and
3. the "North American system" occurs in multiple countries in Europe (from the looks of it, there are fewer countries in Africa using the "North American system" than there are in Europe),

I would suggest these terms are not the best ways to describe the two systems. Are those category titles reflected in the cited sources? I didn't see it in the reference names anyway. Especially if Wikipedia is just inventing these terms, we could come up with something less confusing. -- 129.242.129.238 (talk) 12:20, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]