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Probably the common typographic rule prescribing a space between the numerical value and its unit (cf. https://english.stackexchange.com/q/2794/40139).

Which is utterly dying.

Certainly not in science and engineering.

It’s very hard to type as you need a non-breaking space.

The first (.1 s) is the written method of one-tenth of a second. The second is basic written algebra for one-tenth the value of s factorial (to be pedantic with the exclamation point).

Kind of like the pseudo-math joke around xmas when people write Ho Ho Ho as Ho^3 when it should be (Ho)^3 otherwise it's just Hooo.

I'm pretty sure the exclamation mark is just punctuation and it's supposed to be ".1 s" vs. ".1s"

hence my parenthetical comment

Oh. I didn't realize that by "pedantic" you meant you were giving the wrong answer. Because the real answer is just as pedantic.

Another guess at "(not .1s!)":

Maybe it's to conform to the proper usage of SI units with the space like 100 kg, 45 m/s, 20 kV/ns, and etc...

Maybe gumby is talking about the difference between 0.1s as a time duration vs the concept of time durations with tenths of a second precision?

I have trouble parsing it too.