Re: conplaneteering

On 16 Feb 2005, at 4.47 am, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 06:02:32PM +0100, Carsten Becker wrote:
>> Why can't you Anglophones not simply change to comma like
>> the rest of the world?
>> (This was a rethorical question.)
>
> Is it really an Anglophone thing?  I thought the decimal comma and
> thousands-period were in use in the UK, too.
IIUC, decimal comma and thousand-period were meant to be adopted along
with the metric system in the UK. But that was never going to work.

The recommended system in ustralia is decimal point with numbers and
money (which is often done raised when handwritten but never when
printed), a (thin) space for thousands separators with numbers, and,
for some bizarre reason, a comma for thousands separators with money.
(Note that using a space for thousands separators includes thousandths
separators, so whereas you'd write '33,345.3423463' and sit around
scratching your head trying to work out how many figures there were
after the decimal, you'd write '33 345.342 346 3' and you can see
straight away there's seven.)

I also understand that BIPM, who defines the SI, was once against using
decimal points, but they've since seen the light and accept that in
English you should use a point but in other languages they insist upon
commas. They also recommend the use of a space for thousands
separators.

If everyone could agree on using spaces for thousands then it wouldn't
matter if you were using , or . for the decimal point; this is clearly
the intention of BIPM. Unfortunately I doubt this will happen till
keyboards get a non-breaking space key on them.

I find all the Swedish products I deal with at IKEA really weird when
they say things like 'Gewicht* 3,5 kg/Weight 123,5 oz' though. It's
even weirder when the only language on the packaging is English and
they still use commas for decimal points. It seems to me that
translating punctuation (and time into 12-hour) is just as much a part
of translation as translating 'Gewicht' into 'Weight'.

* I can only remember the German word for 'weight', but chances are the
German word will be on it somewheres.

--
Tristan.

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