On Saturday 21 October 2006 18:27, Pat Naughtin wrote: > About half of the world's nations use a comma as a decimal marker and the > other half use a dot (period or full stop) as their decimal markers. The > only argument that I have seen to support either of these is that the comma > uses a little more ink so it is easier to find on a busy background. On > another issue, both .5L and ,5L as you have written them share the same two > problems. Firstly it is not good practice to use a naked decimal marker > 0.5 L or 0,5 L is better and clearer to see. Secondly, a space is needed to > separate the number from the unit < this is also for clarity and to avoid > confusion.
My father was French, so I am used to both decimal markers, and I cross my sevens. I prefer the dot, because ordered pairs and lists of numbers are separated with commas. But those, I think, are more common in computer data files, which don't use thousand separators. phma
