per
People use "per" to mean "for each" or "according to." They say "miles per gallon" or "per your request." It is a small word that divides one thing by another or points to a rule.
What a model may hear
- permission bits Unix file systems and command lines
- read or set access rights like read, write, execute for owner, group, and others
- period or dot operator programming languages, especially Perl
- concatenate strings or match any character in regular expressions
- per mille or per cent mathematics and statistics
- treat the number as a rate, ratio, or basis point calculation
- persistent entity representation database and web frameworks
- map an object to a database row or expect an ORM query
Where people and models part ways
“per my last email”
Meant: as I already told you
May be taken as: search for email metadata, thread analysis, or permission logs
Say instead: “as I said in my last email”
“50 dollars per person”
Meant: each person pays fifty dollars
May be taken as: compute a rate or divide by a variable named 'person'
Say instead: “fifty dollars for each person”
“do this per the rules”
Meant: follow the rules
May be taken as: look for a variable, function, or configuration named 'rules'
Say instead: “do this following the rules”
“one per customer”
Meant: each customer gets one
May be taken as: loop over customers with a limit of one iteration or apply a database constraint
Say instead: “one for each customer”
Tips
- Avoid 'per' when giving instructions; say 'for each' or 'according to' instead.
- Do not use 'per' as a variable name; it collides with common abbreviations.
- If you mean a rate, write the full formula so the model computes what you intend.
- Quote the phrase after 'per' to signal you mean natural language, not code.
- Check if the model interpreted 'per' as a command by asking it to restate your request in plain words.
Often confused with
- for each
- safer and clearer for iteration
- according to
- safer for citing rules or sources
- percent
- a completed rate, not a divisor
- permission
- the full word the abbreviation hides
- period
- the punctuation mark, not the preposition