Hi. Recently I read a book about color trivia in my language. Everybody knows that the French flag is the Tricolor, consisting of blue, white and red to the right. However, not everyone knows the fact that the ratio of each color in terms of width is 37:30:33 respectively. I was no exception until I learned it. I had simply thought that the flag was divided into three equal areas of color. Color has various visual effects. The white has an expanding effect, the red an advancing or protruding effect, and the blue a receding effect. Considering these effects together, the proportion of each color in the French flag was decided as such so that each color might look like the same size.
My questions is: How would you explain these numbers (blue:white:red=37:30:33) about the Tricolor?
blue strip: 37 units
white strip: 30 units
red strip: 33 units
“units” can be any measure, depending on the actual size of the flag. For example, they could be centimetres, or inches, or units of 1.756 centimetres, or whatever.
Hi. I didn’t seem to make my question understood. When I looked up the word “ratio”, an example sentence included only two items:
The ratio between males and females [of males to females] was three to two.
= There was a three-to-two ratio between males and females [of males to females].
I don’t know how I should apply this example to what I want to say, which has three items, so I wanted to have your sentence describing about the ratio of the width of each color strip in (or on?) the Tricolor using the given numbers as a model sentence for me to follow. Would you kindly do it for me?
I don’t mean to rehash the topic, but I want to make one thing clear.
Are “strip” and “stripe” used in the same way to explain about each color part of the Tricolor?
From Dozy’s first reply I learned that each color part of the Tricolor is called “strip.” If there are three such things, it should be “strips.” But then, both Beeesneees and Dozy (in her second reply) wrote “the blue, white and red stripes …” So these two words are parallel?
In this context, “strip” and “stripe” both work. In other cases, however, they may not be interchangeable. Specifically, “stripe” implies that there is something of a different colour (usually), or at least a different nature, on either side (or one side if it’s the end stripe). A “strip”, on the other hand, can exist in isolation. For example, a long thin detached piece of wood/plastic/etc. could be called a “strip” but not a “stripe”.