Re: Types of numerals

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On 1/4/06, Tristan McLeay <conlang@...> wrote:
>
>>The recommended forms for use in Australia are $ with one slash (rather
>>than the double-slashed form you find in America) and c with no slash.
>
>
> Most fonts have only a single line in $ here as well, actually,
> despite the popularity of the "U superimposed on S" theory of the
> symbol's origin.
Well, most fonts here are the same as most fonts there, so yeah :) I
imagine the best diagnostic there is handwriting. People do still use
double-slashed $ in handwriting here, but I think the single slashed is
more common. I imagine that's because the single slashed symbol is more
common in fonts then anything else, though. Whoever does what the
government says?

> The ¢ symbol exists on some keyboards (and is easy enough to type on
> e.g. the US Mac keyboard layout as alt-4).
Yeah, on my keyboard it's Compose | c. Also Compose - L for the pound
sign and Compose = L for the lira sign, Compose = E for the euro...
Probably others too. This compose key is very convenient for creating
nifty mnemonics.

> It was a typo!  I haven't seen "¢." ever.  Although I have often seen
> things like 0.87¢ on signs where $0.87 is meant.  I've yet to persuade
> a shopkeeper to give me the price as written, sadly. :)
Have fun trying! I don't think they're legally required too :)

>>Not that you see any abbreviation for cents very often. Cents don't buy
>>you much these days, and cent-coins just have the number on them, the
>>unit is implied (and even on dollar and two-dollar coins, the unit is
>>written as a word). (I hear NZ is soon to abolish its five cent
>>coins---something I hope we quickly adopt, too!)
>
>
> There are recurring mumbles over here about abolishing the penny and
> rounding everything to the nearest nickel ($0.05)...
Just don't let it make you think you'll finally see the end of stupid
"$29.99" pricing. Instead, they become $29.95 and are just as annoying.
Y'know, if instead of abolishing the coins we just abolished the
practice, the coins would practically abolish themselves!

>>the old way of writing money
>>as "5l. 11s. 14d." (for five pounds, eleven shillings and fourteen
>>pence) had all of them being Latin abbreviations---the "s." stood not
>>for "shillings" but "solidus". I imagine the name "solidus" for "/" is
>>somehow related to its use in "11/14" for eleven shillings and fourteen
>>pence, but I don't know which was the cause-and-effect is: was it called
>>"solidus", after the currency because of its use, or was it used because
>>it had the same name?
>
>
> According to Webster, the former.  The "/" symbol was used as a
> delimiter between shillings and pence and therefore came to be read
> the same way as the "s." abbreviation, as "solidus", which gradually
> caught on as a more general term for the "/" itself (which is,
> apparently, more properly called a "virgule").
Of course, everyone just calls it a "(forward) slash" anyway, but thanks! :)

Ph. D. and Ray also corrected me about my fourteen pence. My bad! I got
confused between twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a
pound!

--
Tristan.

Replies