A piece that seems to be missing from this discussion is the context. 
Is your application a financial application in which a negative number
is (potentially) a bad thing (thus the red=error pattern) or is it
some other application?  

The domain I support is chemistry and we deal with negative numbers
all the time.  The thing is, in the world of our customers a negative
number isn't necessarily bad or some type of error condition.  We
reserve the red treatment for error messages or conditions (the whole
number, positive or negative might be red if outside or the defined
limits) so we go with the simple "-" to denote negative numbers. 
We don't use " " for positives and don't use paranthesis at all.

Hope this helps.
Pam


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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=28049


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