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There is a cordless vacuum cleaner with a small light to indicate how much battery is left. When there is plenty left, the light is green, but when there isn't much left, the light turns orange.

You can tell when the battery is low by the color of the light.

You can tell when the battery is low from the color of the light.

When you are talking about this vacuum cleaner, which can you say, "by the color of the light" or "from the color of the light"?

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  • I wonder if this is a Britishism -- it's certainly not typical to express lights as lamps in the US. Anyhow, what makes you think it has to be one or the other? Both are fine, once you get past that lamp bit.
    – FeliniusRex - gone
    Commented Jun 24, 2021 at 13:44
  • I wouldn't call it a lamp either! (UK)
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jun 24, 2021 at 15:48
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    @Felinus, in the theatrical industry (in the US) the lamp is the glowing bulb that is installed in a lighting instrument and emits light. In any other context, I would use "lamp" to mean an appliance and "bulb" or "LED" to mean the specific source of light.
    – randomhead
    Commented Jun 24, 2021 at 17:22
  • I edited the post and changed "lamp" to "light."
    – Sanda
    Commented Jun 25, 2021 at 8:16

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This is one of those contexts where the AmE/BrE spelling difference makes comparison really easy. As you can tell by/from this NGram...

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...Americans have a very strong preference for by in such contexts, whereas Brits are more evenly divided between that and from. In practice though, I doubt many if any people either side of the Atlantic would notice any difference, whichever you chose to use.

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