The IEEE/ASTM SI-10 document says the following: "Outside the United States, the comma is widely used as the decimal marker. In some applications, therefore, the common practice in the United States of using the comma to separate digits into groups of three (as in 23,478) may cause ambiguity. To avoid this potential source of confusion, recommended international practice calls for separating the digits into groups of three, counting from the decimal marker toward the left and the right, and using a thin, fixed space to separate the groups. In numbers of four digits either side of the decimal marker, the space is usually not necessary, except for uniformity in tables."
As this list server has an international group of participants, we use the spaces, as recommended. Thin, fixed spaces are not, of course, quite as easy to do in email as in word processor and desktop publishing documents. The ideal is, of course, thin, fixed, non-breaking spaces. In documents intended only for printing, I find the easiest approach is to use an invisible period (e.g., a white period, where the background or the medium [white paper, for example] is white). I avoid that approach for web-based documents with other than a white background, as people with vision problems will have their browser suppress the background color. Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Behalf Of Carl Sorenson >Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 19:56 >To: U.S. Metric Association >Subject: [USMA:25214] Commas vs. spaces > > >>Ok now. This is getting silly. >>What's up with the "96 % of 5 000 444" stuff. >>Whatever happened to 96% of 5,000,444 stuff? > >It isn't really silly. It is just a common way to write numbers for an >international audience or a technical audience. France uses the comma for >the decimal marker, for example, so using commas for the digit separator >would look odd to them. I don't generally write numbers with >spaces since I >usually write for an American audience, and here it is quite >standard to use >the commas. Using the spaces can look strange to many Americans, but it is >actually a pretty accepted practice for many circles. Some on this list >might say it is the "correct" way to write numbers, which I would disagree >with. I don't believe that there is such a thing as correct/incorrect for >many stylistic questions (just like "color" vs. "colour"). > >Carl
