The South African adoption of the commas was a mini-exercise in standardisation. When South Africa switched over to the metric system in the 1970s there were two official languages English and Afrikaans. Each had their own abbreviations and conventions. In English, the date was written DD-MMM-YYYY (the British way), but in Afrikaans the date was written MMM-DD, YYYY. If the month was written in characters, there was no problem, but a all-numeric date was ambiguous. The South African solution was to adopt the ISO standard YYYY-MM-DD.
Switching from the imperial to the metric system enabled the two expression 6 ft, 3in *(English) and 6 vt, 3 dm (Afrikaans) to be written 1.90 m (international). The decision to swap from the dot to the comma probably had anti-British overtones, but was justified in practice on grounds that there was less scope for error (a comma was a more noticeable character than a dot), also most of Europe used a comma. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Payne Sent: 14 July 2014 05:45 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:54120] RE: Don't be a dunce! I can only speak about the English language Wikipedia. Many English speaking nations use the comma as the decimal, South Africa is one, So do the French and probably most Europeans. Its a cleaner way of writing and it works for the digits on the right side of the decimal. Claiming Americans like their freedom is the same as saying well stick with American Customary because were free to. It does not help in international trade! We need standardisation and this is one standard recommended by NIST. Mike Payne On 14 Jul 2014, at 06:34, Harold_Potsdamer <[email protected]> wrote: Try checking an authoritative source, like the BIPM before insisting Americans has some sort of derogation based on their claimed exceptionalism. Here is a style guide from the US construction industry: https://www.wbdg.org/ccb/VA/VAMETRIC/guide.pdf Rules for Writing Numbers - Always use decimals, not fractions (write 0.75 g, not ¾g). - Use a zero before the decimal marker for values less than one (write 0.45 g, not .45 g). - Use spaces instead of commas to separate blocks of three digits for any number over four digits (write 45 138 kg or 0.004 46 kg or 4371 kg). Note that this does not apply to the expression of amounts of money. - In the United States, the decimal marker is a period; in other countries a comma usually is used See also 5.3.4 from the NIST guide: http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP330/sp330.pdf Under what authority do you operate under that gives you the right to break the rules? Those who want to do things their way and think they are exceptional are the real dunces. From: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, 2014-07-13 22:51 To: U.S. Metric Association <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:54114] RE: Don't be a dunce! Harold. Americans use commas or spaces. We love our freedom. ----- Message from Harold_Potsdamer <[email protected]> --------- Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 20:07:41 -0400 From: Harold_Potsdamer <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] Subject: [USMA:54113] RE: Don't be a dunce! To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Not only that, commas dividing thousands which should be spaces. From: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, 2014-07-13 14:26 To: U.S. Metric Association <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:54111] RE: Don't be a dunce! No zeroes on the leading decimals? Tsk tsk tsk. :) -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [USMA:54110] Don't be a dunce! From: [email protected] Date: Sun, July 13, 2014 11:22 am To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Posted on Facebook and Twitter today: Don't be a dunce! http://MetricPioneer.com/Metrication-America David Pearl www.MetricPioneer.com <http://www.metricpioneer.com/> 503-428-4917 ----- End message from Harold_Potsdamer <[email protected]> ----- David Pearl www.MetricPioneer.com <http://www.metricpioneer.com/> 503-428-4917
