Terminology nitpick with percentages

[daftsod]

The clues are okay as long as you get they're intense.

[Martika14]

No, 1% less than 10% is "take one percent of 10% and subtract it from 10%", which is 10 - (10/100) = 10 - 0.1 = 9.9. Yes, nine and nine tenths.

If you want to do straight subtraction, then you need to not talk about "percents", because those by definition involve division (by 100, to be specific). Hence "percentage points". One percentage point less than 10% is, indeed, 9%.

I know that people very often use "percent" sloppily like you (and the puzzle writers) are using it, but it's still sloppy and incorrect.

[Dotnurse]

Martika14... 1% less than 10% is 9.0 % Your response of the correct answer being 9.9 ( which means "9 and 9 tenths." ) is NOT correct!

[MillieMcGee]

if you want to be even more nitpicky then you could say that the clue should read one percent fewer

[Martika14]

I just got a puzzle having to do with hedge funds (or something like that, I never read the actual descriptions), where one of the categories was YTD returns, given as a percentage - I believe the values were 6%, 7%, 8%, 9%, and 10%. That's fine, but the problem was, the clues said stuff like "the fund started in 1992 returned one percent less than the fund managed by Bob". Thing is, one percent less than 10 percent is 9.9 - not one of the possible values. To get from 10% to 9%, you need to subtract one percentage point, not one percent.

(I did warn you that this would be a nitpick.)