I lived in South Africa when that country adopted the metric system. At the time there were two official languages – English and Afrikaans. When I was at school (pre-metric days) I was taught to write the date as “24 March 2016” (UK English style), but in Afrikaans we were taught to write “Maart 24 2016” (A literal translation of the UK style). Now put those dates into numbers and you get the DD-MM-YYYY vs MM-DD-YYYY confusion. Bilingualism caused many other anomalies - which was written first “100 vt” or “100 ft” (English first or Afrikaans first was part of an on-going political debate).
Shortly after the UK announced her metrication program, South Africa announced hers. One of the by-products was standardisation of symbols – ISO 8601 was adopted for dates – “2016-03-24” is pretty unambiguous, as is “40 m” for distance. The only thing that was not standardised between English and Afrikaans was the use of the dot or the comma as a decimal separator – the Dutch and the Germans used the comma and the English the dot. The power-that-be (who were rather anti-English) decided to standardise on the comma with the result that now, even though English is the de facto lingua franca in a nation that has eleven official languages, the comma has remained the official decimal separator – the chief advantage being that it is more prominent than the dot. From: USMA [mailto:usma-boun...@colostate.edu] On Behalf Of Michael Payne Sent: 24 March 2016 20:11 Cc: USMA Subject: [USMA 142] Re: Formatting numbers and the decimal marker South Africa uses the comma as a country regardless of the language of the writer. I think the main point (excuse the pun) is getting rid of the comma for the thousand separator where it can be confused with the decimal point in a lot of languages. The use of the comma or point are optional, it’s the same in the USA and probably every other country that is a member of BIPM. I had not realised until recently that this standard had been adopted by so many countries. Hence 1 000 000,0 or 1 000 000.0. I don’t really care whether it’s a space or a thin space as long as the comma is gone. I’ve done this for 30 years in the US and no one has questioned what I’ve done. When you think about it Ma Bell decided on the dash for the spacer, they could just as easily have written the phone number 201,555,1212 or 201.555.1212 or 201 555 1212. I think the last one is just as understandable and easily read. Mike Payne On 22 Mar 2016, at 17:50, John Altounji <phy...@msn.com> wrote: I agree. John Altounji One size does not fit all. Social promotion ruined Education. <http://bit.do/tounj> http://bit.do/tounj From: USMA [mailto:usma-boun...@colostate.edu] On Behalf Of jmsteele9...@sbcglobal.net Sent: Monday, March 21, 2016 5:35 PM To: Michael Payne <metricmik...@gmail.com>; USMA <usma@colostate.edu> Subject: [USMA 136] Re: Formatting numbers and the decimal marker In the Preface to the SI Brochure, the BIPM notes that THEY use the point as the decimal marker in the English text and the comma in the French text (the only two languages they support). I think the logical conclusion is that the English language and English-speaking countries use the point, OTHER languages may use the comma. To avoid confusion, neither may use either as a thousands divider (at least in an SI measurement context), only the space should be used. I am aware they recommend a thin space, but on the Internet, there is a problem. The Unicode non-breaking thin space is unreliable and does not decode in many browsers or fonts. I think it would be almost mandatory to use the regular non-breaking space. Also, I think the financial community will not support the space as thousands separator, but I support it for SI data. In an English Wikipedia article, the decimal marker should be the point. _____ From: Michael Payne <metricmik...@gmail.com> To: USMA <usma@colostate.edu> Sent: Monday, March 21, 2016 3:56 PM Subject: [USMA 133] Formatting numbers and the decimal marker I suggested a change to the Wikipedia manual of style the other day. Reading some of the comments today I realise I need some support form USMA members who in my opinion are all rational people. Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_style Page down to Formatting numbers (the subject above) and read what I have proposed. Please support my suggestion. Mike Payne. aka avi8tor. _______________________________________________ USMA mailing list USMA@colostate.edu https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma
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