Pat, your posting reminded me of an idea I had (but never implemented) a
while back. We could use SI prefixes when writing cheques to familiarize
financial institutions and the public with the prefixes.
For example, when making out a cheque for $125.00, I will try writing "1.25
hectodollars" on the line provided for the written-out expression. (I will,
of course, write "$125.00" in the box provided for the purely numerical
expression.) I imagine the recipient might ask what a hectodollar is, but
since it is a precisely defined term there should be no problems with having
the cheque accepted. Also, we could have pro-SI "Vanity Cheques" printed
that would have the prefixes and unit definitions on them (perhaps as part
of the background but still readable). They could even have a
millimeter/centimeter scale printed across the top and/or sides. I've seen
"Happy Face" and Mickey Mouse vanity cheques, so why not have metric cheques
as well?
Jason
----- Original Message -----
From: Pat Naughtin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: U.S. Metric Association <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 4:35 PM
Subject: [USMA:15721] Money and SI
Dear Luke,
on 2001/10/17 20.40, Luke Nicolaides at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> How many job adverts give the salary as £17k etc for £17,000? How many car
> adverts describe the car as 1999 20k, meaning it is a 1999 modle with
20,000
> miles?
What a lovely question. I have long thought that the use of SI prefixes
would ease our muddled use of big numbers, and help gain support for SI from
the general public.
I would appreciate your comments on the thoughts below:
Money and SI
The bankers and other regular handlers of money are remarkably conservative.
Recently (2001), the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) changed from using
'pieces of eight' to using decimal currency, dollars and cents, in quoting
stock prices. This change took the NYSE 208 years from the introduction of
decimal currency in the USA in 1793.
In 1792, it was common practice, in writing cheques and contracts, to place
the pound sign (£) before the number from fear that a crook might add a
digit or two at the left-hand end of the number. This led to our peculiar
practice of writing one thing and saying another.
We don't say $50 as 'dollars fifty'; we say 'fifty dollars.' Putting the
dollar sign before the number is clearly inconsistent with how we say the
amount. And, just as clearly, we have not yet recovered from the use of the
pound sign (£) placed before the number in 1792.
Even within Australia, we are not consistent. We put the dollar symbol
first, as in $12.34, but when we are using cents, we put the number first,
as in 34c. Some other nations do the same as us, and others are more
rational.
(For the moment I am ignoring the issue of writing $12.34 and saying 'twelve
dollars thirty-four' with the $ sign on the left of the written number and
the word 'dollar' placed in the middle of the spoken number!)
Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, and the
USA place their currency symbols before the number, and Finland, France,
Germany, Norway, Spain, and Sweden place their currency symbols after the
number.
I am not aware of any official policy with the introduction of the Euro;
there seems to be no set way to place its symbol, €. I suppose people will
stick with their current practices and write 1000 € in Finnish, French
Belgian, French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish, and € 1000 in
Brazilian, Danish, Dutch, English, Flemish Belgian, Italian, and Swiss.
However, they will all continue to say the words with the Euro after the
number.
The Australian practice of placing the currency symbol before the number
leads to some odd results when we choose to combine the dollar sign with
other symbols. For example, at the greengrocers we see might see a sign that
says $2 kg and we would read this as two dollars per kilogram. It would be
more logical to write it as 2 $/kg, so that the reading and the saying could
be the same. It also makes more sense to write two thousand dollars per
annum as 2000 $/a rather than the clumsy looking, and difficult to read,
$2000/a. It reads better and looks less cluttered if you keep the units
symbols together.
We also get extremely odd results when journalists have to write large
numbers. Consider $1000m/a and $2000bi/y, which I think were supposed to
mean 'one thousand million dollars per annum' and 'two thousand billion
dollars per annum' respectively.
With inflation, over many years, the large numbers needed for such things as
market capitalisation of major companies or any number as part of a set of
national accounts is now largely meaningless to all but a specialist few. We
cannot come to terms with these numbers because inflation has gradually made
our numerical language insufficient.
For a time we tried words like billions, trillions, quadrillions, but
because of their diverse histories and their undefined meaninglessness, we
never comprehended or accepted them fully.
Fortunately we have available a set of well-established words that can solve
this linguistic problem for us. These words are the prefixes from the system
of international units (SI). These are not only readily available but they
have used successfully in many varied places.
Australians have used the idea of kilodollars for years. This is not in the
sense of 'My aunty died and left me three kilodollars', but in the form of
'Salary package – 100 k$', sometimes written without the $ symbol. In French
economic circles, they use kF (kilofrancs) for thousands of Francs and MF
(megafrancs) for millions of Francs.
I suspect it is only a matter of time before these ideas extend to k$
(kilodollars), M$ (megadollars), G$ (gigadollars), T$ (teradollars) and P$
(petadollars).
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
CAMS - Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist
- United States Metric Association
ASM - Accredited Speaking Member
- National Speakers Association of Australia
Member, International Federation for Professional Speakers
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