Fatal mistakes can and have been made in hospitals because of naked decimal fractions. .9 can be read as 9 if the point is deleted or unclear. If these errors involved the metric system the BWMA et. al. had a field day. The same with ,9. However, I have almost never seen the latter thing. It is an ISO standard: the decimal sign must always be preceded by a digit.
Han ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian J White" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, 2003-11-25 19:41 Subject: [USMA:27676] Re: Fwd: [Fwd: JCAHO "Do Not Use" List: Abbreviations, Acronyms and Symbols] > Yea..and although I'm biased because I use 0.9, 0,9 just looks weird. > > I'm sure it's the same the other way around...but I'd be happy with 0.9 or 0,9 liters instead of 0.9 or 0,9 pounds. > > haha.. > Gimmie liters instead of gallons, kilograms instead of pounds, meters instead of feet or yards...most of everything else is just fluff. > > At 20:54 2003-11-24 +0100, Han Maenen wrote: > >Writing ,9 is as ugly and wrong as writing .9 is. It flies in the face of international standardization. The only correct forms are 0,9 or 0.9, depending of where you live. NO to 'naked decimal fractions'! Han
