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 scripting from MUDs. That’s really how I learned automation and why I have the job I have today.
I learned about scams and how to be weary of them from RuneScape
That too!
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.
Now imagine the exceptions in Europe with actual countries
It genuinely seems asinine to me to call the floor above the ground floor the first floor.
It would be if you did it in the US, where everybody knows the ground floor is the first floor. Here in Europe, it’s just taught that way from birth, so everybody knows that the first floor is above ground and there’s no confusion.
I understand not getting confused. That doesn’t mean calling the second floor that you put your feet on “the first floor” makes sense.
It makes perfect sense if you learn it that way! It’s hardly asinine in any case. I don’t think it’s ever caused a problem, except for Americans in Europe getting confused by it or vice versa.
It makes total sense of you don’t consider the first level a real floor because it’s just, like, ground (duh). /hj
I’m American and I often think we do things wrong…
but not this. First floor on the SECOND floor. It’s just wrong.
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”
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”.
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!
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.
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?
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!
Beats me, I think in games it’s common to see 1F, 2F, 3F… (in Pokemon for example would be 1st Floor = 1F)
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.
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
In order to get symmetry, floor 0 should be the ground floor
Floor 0 is “not in the building”, nobody calls first/ground “0” in reality
Then, we apply your own logic of adding a floor on going up to include “going in” and vice versa for “going out” and we get why the US does it the way we do
I don’t get what you’re saying. Why wouldn’t floor 0 be in the building if we started assigning numbers to floors?
0 is nothing, non-existent, etc., so it represents not being in the building, where there is no floor (we call it ground)
It’s the first floor that you encounter of a building, not the zeroeth floor you encounter
Normal human convention is to count physical existing items from 1, I wouldn’t say I’m wearing 0 shirts right now at work for example, or that I’m wearing 1 shoe
Oh, you’re so close. Ground Zero is nothing, no elevation above or below ground level. The literal ground you walked on, into the building. You’re on ground level (outside) and then you’re on the ground floor (inside), as opposed to the American version where you suddenly “jump” to first floor once you’re in a building.
The first floor of a building is usually on a foundation, raising it above ground level
We call the thing you stand on outside ground and inside we call them floors, “ground floor” is silly
Ever like, stepped into a shopping mall? I’ve never had to climb a single stair to get in
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
US, Russia, and China on the same side is weird to see.
I am from Baltics and always assumed naming 1st floor ground floor was weird. Turns out we are the weird ones.
Make up your mind, Antarctica.
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
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.
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.
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.
Eh, I find it easier. If someone says second floor, I know that’s two flights of stairs I need to go up.
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
Not exclusive to UK or US; here in Brazil me and my wife are from neighboring states and have this same difference in floor naming.
British use 0 indexing? Never thought about it like that huh
But you would call the item at index zero the “first” element, not the “zeroth” element.
I personally call it zeroth index to about confusion, so G floor or even 0 on elevators is akin to that. But yeah, nobody would say it’s the first of all the floors in the building, but not the first floor.
Me: What is this we’re standing on?
Patrick: The floor.
Me: And if I go up the stairs, what will I be standing on?
Patrick: The floor.
Me: So there is a floor above this one?
Patrick: Yes.
Me: And in order, that floor upstairs would come after this one?
Patrick: Yes.
Me: So, that would make it the second floor I’ve touched after coming inside?
Patrick: Yes.
Me: So which floor are we on now?
Patrick: Ground floor.
What is -1 + 1? So which floor do you end up on if you go up one floor from the basement?
Edit: but apparently you don’t call those -1, -2, etc, but B1, B2, etc, is that right?
That’s correct. It’s a building, not a number line.
On the ground floor, you’re standing on the ground which has been covered by a (hopefully nice) floor.
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)
I would be okay with this if Britain started with the zeroth floor.
And basement levels are into the negatives.
This is how some lift buttons work in the UK. Admittedly ground is often G, but it’s also often 0.
I didn’t know they used 0-indexed buildings in ingerland
As someone who does a bit of programming, I think a 256 story tall building should have floors 0-255. But as an American there should be 257 total floors so we can skip floor 13 because it’s bad luck.
Can you imagine if we skipped 13 in our code and said screw it let’s go 1-based, too ?
257.257.257.0
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
The older buildings in Hong Kong often need to clarify this to avoid mix ups. Back in the day it’s not uncommon to see signs advertising a business on the 3rd floor of a building, for example, to have 3 樓 2字 (3rd floor, number 2) to tell people they’re on the 3rd floor but you need the press the 2 button in the lift. Also some (most? all?) skip the 4th floor for bad luck.
Thank you for this clarification. Also threeth, lol.
Dang it I did too many edits lol
I shouldn’t have said anything. LoL.
