Linear Feet of Space for Dummies

Linear feet of shelving

We have, frankly, lost count of how many times eHowians have proven ignorant of the concept of "linear feet," especially if we throw in the similar usages linear yards and linear meters. For some reason (stupidity, we suspect) these people just can't seem to capture the essential nature of a linear foot. Take, for instance, Soren Bagley, who tried to explain "How to Calculate Storage Space Using Linear Feet" for the mother lode of dumbassery, Demand Media (now known as Leaf Group) and the site HomeSteady.com. Apparently that English Lit degree wasn't much help...

Bagley thrashed about for at first, repeating the common but rather inane claim that

"Linear feet and regular feet are two ways of expressing the same exact unit of measurement."

Well, yes and no: if you say that you have ten linear feet of shelving, that certainly means that you have one shelf ten feet long or perhaps two shelves five feet long, etc. Soren's concept of storage space breaks down, however, a bit later: "Whenever you calculate the storage space of a given area, you are essentially calculating the volume of the space. " Besides the superfluity of "essentially," that's flat-out wrong. Bagley goes on to "explain" that to calculate storage space you simply measure the length, width and height of the space ("in linear feet" of course) and multiply them to get the volume. Yeah, like that's practical!

Clearly, Soren's never worked in a bookstore or library... or anywhere else with shelves. Here's the real method of calculating storage space in linear feet: multiply the total length of shelving by the width of the shelves by the space between shelves. For instance, ten feet of shelves six inches wide is five square feet. If there are twelve inches of space above the shelf, that's five cubic feet. Although the closet above may have a total volume of 800 ft³ (10' x 10' x 8'), it's for damned sure you can't put 800 ft³ of clothes and shoes in there!

But no, like most eHowians Bagley is fooled by the notion that a linear foot is the same as a "regular" foot. Like the eHowians who've gone before, Soren didn't go on to read that a linear foot is almost always a measure of something with a fixed width, so calculating area and/or volume requires that you know what that width is. Soren just took the easy way out and got it wrong: that's why he's the Dumbass of the Day.

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