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Reading this article, there is a line saying,

The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, has for years systematically blocked plans to modernize the agency’s paper-based weapons-tracing system with a searchable database. As a result, records of gun sales going back decades are stored in boxes stacked seven high, waiting to be processed, against every wall.

When you look at the picture of the boxes of the records stacked against the wall, it is eight-high.

boxes of records stacked in a shipping container

Is this kind of a metaphor how tall they(the paper of records of gun purchases) are against the wall? Or is there another meaning? (Googling by "seven high meaning" didn't produce anything).

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    there is utterly no special meaning. it's possible, that the phrase "the full nine yards" has come to mind. (it is totally unrelated.)
    – Fattie
    May 4, 2021 at 20:37
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    @Fattie Yeah as you say at the comment line below, "There is no need to over think, over answer, and over comment on such a simple question." What surprises me more is than the actual hight but rather that this question has entered HNQ...
    – Kentaro
    May 4, 2021 at 20:43
  • indeed. I'm essentially "giving up" on gently hinting to folks that a straightforward, non-qualified, answer, sans novel-length asides, is best :O
    – Fattie
    May 5, 2021 at 20:39
  • Did you consider that it might be a loose generalisation, or even simply a mistake?
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Sep 8 at 19:28

1 Answer 1

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No. It may be that the person who wrote that didn't count the exact height, or the one stack in the image doesn't tell the whole truth.

If you look at the stack next to the stack in the picture, it's only 6 boxes high. Someone may have moved a box from one stack to another to get at the one underneath it. There's also a 2 box high stack on the end. I think it is very likely that the majority of the stacks are 7 boxes high.

Or perhaps an editor who used a different photo than the one the journalist was looking at (or saw in person).

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    Well, if you look at the stack next to the stack in the picture, it's only 6 boxes high. Someone may have moved a box from one stack to another to get at the one underneath it. There's also a 2 box high stack on the end. I think it is very likely that the majority of the stacks are 7 boxes high.
    – ColleenV
    May 3, 2021 at 20:47
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    Or perhaps an editor who used a different photo than the one the journalist was looking at (or saw in person).
    – jamesqf
    May 4, 2021 at 17:16
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    @jamesqf. I think, has hit the nail on the head. In journalism, the authorship of the article, the taking and selection of photos to go with it, and the headline are all entirely decoupled, and it's common enough to find discrepancies large and small. For the author to write "seven high" was likely to have been an average of an example shown to them, or described to them, and does not indicate that somewhere you can't find one stack that's arbitrarily higher.
    – CCTO
    May 4, 2021 at 17:55
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    There is no need to over think, over answer, and over comment on such a simple question.
    – Fattie
    May 4, 2021 at 20:38
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    Those boxes aren't stacked against a wall of the agency's building either, but are in a container in their yard, because the building floor caved in, because they were stacked seven high before the building collapse.
    – Pete Kirkham
    May 4, 2021 at 21:58

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