Discussion of Numerical Punctuation

[TexLaw]

Well, you have identified an interesting notion. However, isn't a single number a single thought that is most appropriately separated for mental digestion through commas, rather than periods? Granted, that decimal point period is there to signify the zero point. Perhaps someone could have come up with another, symbol, but it's hard not to appreciate the elegance of using such a simple punctuation (truly, the simplest) that already exists.

There's also the congruency with English-style writing, where one would would write out a numeral such as: one million, one-hundred-eighty-four thousand, seventy-three, and sixty-two one-hundredths.

I've seen such a thing hyphenated all the way through or done without commas at all, but never with periods. Properly so, too, for all those bits are there.

 

[jbcarioca]

Well, you have identified an interesting notion. However, isn't a single number a single thought that is most appropriately separated for mental digestion through commas, rather than periods? Granted, that decimal point period is there to signify the zero point. Perhaps someone could have come up with another, symbol, but it's hard not to appreciate the elegance of using such a simple punctuation (truly, the simplest) that already exists.

There's also the congruency with English-style writing, where one would would write out a numeral such as: one million, one-hundred-eighty-four thousand, seventy-three, and sixty-two one-hundredths.

I've seen such a thing hyphenated all the way through or done without commas at all, but never with periods. Properly so, too, for all those bits are there.

From a grammatical perspective the written words representing numbers should be properly governed by grammatical rules, therefore each language will have it's own rules which may or may not compare with others. That is, after all, part of the notion of a language.

Numbers themselves are different than words. The numbers represent the same thing regardless of the language spoken by the user and creator fo the numbers. They are universal. I argue that the presentation of numbers should be made in a way to communicate most easily with anyone using those numbers.

Repeating, I do not advocate linguistic standards across languages or even geographies. There are more than 6,000 languages. Let's preserve them, and dialects, accents and other quirks. There's too much homogeneity anyway IMHO.

Numbers should be numbers. They should transcend all the rest of our ambiguous world and be the same for everyone.

 

[AudubonB]

Now, how about the following? I'm sure you in NoAm recognize what the following represent:

(212) 555-1212
212-555-1212
212.555.1212

(...there must be more, as well). Is one of these preferable to another? Is one abhorrent, or in some way moronic?

 

[cpa]

Numbers should be numbers. They should transcend all the rest of our ambiguous world and be the same for everyone.

Too true. Yet languages have different alphabets even though they use the same letter representations. Spanish has the letters ch (che), ll (a y sound; olla is pronounced O-ya), en-yay (the n with a tilde over it), and rr (the trilled r.) Spanish added k and w much later--probably under duress! In fact the occupation of Iberia by the Moors lent a number of words to Spanish. Some rivers in Spain have guad- as a prefix which came directly from the Arabic wadi, or river. But I digress.

Because I have spent my entire life in these United States, I learned the comma and the decimal point. Commas separate; periods stop. We learn to speak, narrate, and orate with oral inflections to communicate an ongoing message (comma) or a completed message (period.) I guess it makes sense to me to use the period to distinguish the whole number from the fractional number. When I see a period, I stop. Perhaps I would think differently if I had lived my entire life elsewhere.

An interesting exercise would be to research how numbers were written way back in the day when illiteracy was rampant. Only the aristocrats and religious sorts like monks were literate. They wrote. How did they write numbers? Did they write numbers or did they spell them out? Then, how did the printers start presenting numbers after the printing press was invented? Were there differences in the layouts of the box that the typesetters used? It is certainly within the realm of possibility that the "modern" method of punctuating numbers evolved from the days of typesetters. And perhaps typesetting was different between Europe and the US.

 

[jkn]

Handwriting is going the way of the typewriter.
So it's time to start slamming the qwerty keyboard, right? :-D

I always was puzzled why computers did not use a hard push to create uppercase characters. Touch normally, lower case. Push til it clicks, uppercase.
Then they did some really silly things.
Lowercase is , and uppercase is < lowercase is . uppercase is > - Uh... Why not <> and ,. so it makes sense? Ditto for + and -.
Spacebar should have doubled as ALT/Control. Hit the spacebar and release, it spaces. Hold spacebar while hitting another char, it does the ALT, push the spacebar until it clicks and hit another char, it's Control, or if you don't it spaces.

Now you've cleared up a lot of real estate and made for quicker use with fewer mistakes. So you have room put Computer Special Chars closer to your fingers. @ .com and other commonly used chars.

In my keyboard uppercase is '>' lowercase (same key) is '<'. Worst mistakes: Keys in a keyboard are in mixed order. There is not enough keys, so almost every country has own keyboard version. ASCII had same problem. Even European languages needed own version of it (of course different in every country).

Configuration options for keyboard in /usr/share/doc/keyboard-configuration/xorg.lst has 904 lines.

 

[jkn]

Well, you have identified an interesting notion. However, isn't a single number a single thought that is most appropriately separated for mental digestion through commas, rather than periods? Granted, that decimal point period is there to signify the zero point. Perhaps someone could have come up with another, symbol, but it's hard not to appreciate the elegance of using such a simple punctuation (truly, the simplest) that already exists.

There's also the congruency with English-style writing, where one would would write out a numeral such as: one million, one-hundred-eighty-four thousand, seventy-three, and sixty-two one-hundredths.

I've seen such a thing hyphenated all the way through or done without commas at all, but never with periods. Properly so, too, for all those bits are there.

Yes, good thousand separator has been invented. It is " " (, is a bad choice).
perhaps “&nbsp;” would be better. I cannot insert it here, so I'll use

1 000 000

 

[jbcarioca]

Now, how about the following? I'm sure you in NoAm recognize what the following represent:

(212) 555-1212
212-555-1212
212.515.1212

(...there must be more, as well). Is one of these preferable to another? Is one abhorrent, or in some way moronic?

Ah, now you're confusing a clear and unambiguous moral rant by introducing reality!

Even so, from an historical perspective (which you're old enough to remember although your son probably never will know) your first option did have the merit of distinguishing what was then long distance from local. Even that has no meaning today. FWIW, many countries have systems that make clear tariff distinctions, mobile vs fixed and/or carrier distinctions with numbers that normally precede the particular instrument/'pbx' identifier.

My pedantic rant allows for such discrepancies because these number strings have a specific local purpose. For general and/or analytic discussions it still is far preferable to have a single global convention.

Since nobody else has chosen to attack my position on the basis of efficacy I must do so myself. My solution presumes a duodecimal system. Not perhaps by intent, by certainly by net effect. Nearly all computers, so far at least, are binary. Other numerical systems can be used for a variety of purposes. My treasured use of periods as separators for groups of thousands is a duodecimal system, thus perhaps a trifle old-fashioned and perhaps solving a non-existent problem. Those two characteristics might well be applied to the proponent of this solution, were anybody so brave as to tempt the moderator with a personal attack on the writer. I'm speculating that the moderator might let this one pass.

 

[AudubonB]

Ah, now you're confusing a clear and unambiguous moral rant by introducing reality!

Even so, from an historical perspective (which you're old enough to remember although your son probably never will know) your first option did have the merit of distinguishing what was then long distance from local. Even that has no meaning today. FWIW, many countries have systems that make clear tariff distinctions, mobile vs fixed and/or carrier distinctions with numbers that normally precede the particular instrument/'pbx' identifier.

My pedantic rant allows for such discrepancies because these number strings have a specific local purpose. For general and/or analytic discussions it still is far preferable to have a single global convention.

Since nobody else has chosen to attack my position on the basis of efficacy I must do so myself. My solution presumes a duodecimal system. Not perhaps by intent, by certainly by net effect. Nearly all computers, so far at least, are binary. Other numerical systems can be used for a variety of purposes. My treasured use of periods as separators for groups of thousands is a duodecimal system, thus perhaps a trifle old-fashioned and perhaps solving a non-existent problem. Those two characteristics might well be applied to the proponent of this solution, were anybody so brave as to tempt the moderator with a personal attack on the writer. I'm speculating that the moderator might let this one pass.

Aww, heck. I'm old enough to remember: CApital 7-1234; to remember party lines; to remember how you could dial a special sequence so that if you hung up quickly you could get your own phone to ring....

....did I ever relate how my g-g-great grandfather received a patent in 186_ for inventing a method wherein one could send one's own signature, fac simile, over a telegraph!!!!!??? That's right: he invented the fax machine. Boy, have I gotten off topic here. And I still can't figure how that was done.

 

[jbcarioca]

Aww, heck. I'm old enough to remember: CApital 7-1234; to remember party lines; to remember how you could dial a special sequence so that if you hung up quickly you could get your own phone to ring....

....did I ever relate how my g-g-great grandfather received a patent in 186_ for inventing a method wherein one could send one's own signature, fac simile, over a telegraph!!!!!??? That's right: he invented the fax machine. Boy, have I gotten off topic here. And I still can't figure how that was done.

OK, Audi, you can claim to be old but I am old. MY great grandfather laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable. As it happens neither one of us seems to have a clue why our antecedents were smarter than are we.

Finally, you 'gotta' remember we're OT by definition. It's surpassingly difficult get get OT in OT is it not?

 

[Ulmo]

The US should be metric by now. All our measuring equipment is dual mode now, medical devices are metric, military is metric, aviation design is metric, cars are now metric, and most our food is marked both ways. The construction industry is the last significant holdout.

I would agree with a new measurement system if it was human sized, but in the case of Imperial vs. Metric, the Imperial system is the human sized system, and the Metric one is not. It's as if they're trying to turn the world into using Esperanto instead of English, when English is clearly the winner (and not the British type either, but the American type).

I like the idea of using decimals in Metric, but they just picked bad sizes. Why do we have to do second, minute, and hour arithmetic instead of just a day being "1" and noon being ".5", with ".52" a time that is 52/100ths of the way from midnight to midnight the next day? Fahrenheit is around 100 for human temperature, and 0 for ocean temperature when it goes solid. Sailing is outdated, but humans aren't. I know that 73 degrees works well for me, but 72 degrees does not. In Metric, there would be no 73, only 72 and 74 -- I would constantly be too hot and/or too cold in Metric, but in Fahrenheit I would be fine. Why is ten centimeters shorter than my hand and 100 centimeters longer than my foot? My foot is about a foot long, and my thumb is about an inch wide. I am two yards tall, two yards wide if hands outstretched, and my sternum is a yard from the tip of my fingers. That's a human sized system. Metric failed at every conceivable opportunity. The only thing Metric is good for is communist spies who import deadly drugs, and measure drugs in metric. Metric is immoral, and only for evil immoral illegal things.

Besides that glaring error, I agreed with everything else in your post.

 

[HankLloydRight]

 

[Jays200]

In fact, at 82.3mm vs 324.3mm, Germany's population is 1/4 that of the US.

You guys crack me up.

"In fact, at 3.240" vs 12.768", Germany's population is 0.25 that of the US"

Maybe you meant to use "MM" as per Mixing use of K for thousands and MM for millions

 

[AudubonB]

I would agree with a new measurement system if it was human sized, but in the case of Imperial vs. Metric, the Imperial system is the human sized system, and the Metric one is not. It's as if they're trying to turn the world into using Esperanto instead of English, when English is clearly the winner (and not the British type either, but the American type).

I like the idea of using decimals in Metric, but they just picked bad sizes. Why do we have to do second, minute, and hour arithmetic instead of just a day being "1" and noon being ".5", with ".52" a time that is 52/100ths of the way from midnight to midnight the next day? Fahrenheit is around 100 for human temperature, and 0 for ocean temperature when it goes solid. Sailing is outdated, but humans aren't. I know that 73 degrees works well for me, but 72 degrees does not. In Metric, there would be no 73, only 72 and 74 -- I would constantly be too hot and/or too cold in Metric, but in Fahrenheit I would be fine. Why is ten centimeters shorter than my hand and 100 centimeters longer than my foot? My foot is about a foot long, and my thumb is about an inch wide. I am two yards tall, two yards wide if hands outstretched, and my sternum is a yard from the tip of my fingers. That's a human sized system. Metric failed at every conceivable opportunity. The only thing Metric is good for is communist spies who import deadly drugs, and measure drugs in metric. Metric is immoral, and only for evil immoral illegal things.

Besides that glaring error, I agreed with everything else in your post.

There is a great reason some time is measured not in decimal fashion. And aside from that glaring error of yours...I disagree with everything else in your post.

As most recently brought back home yesterday when I was cutting up a fine length of beautiful stock for a cabinet. Unfortunately, it just wasn't a full 12 feet long. It was 11 feet 10 5/8".

Oh boy.

Eventually - and it takes a ridiculous amount of time - I arrived at eight lengths that each are 17 5/8" long. And even to relate this morning what that final number came, I had to recreate the final amount by doing the math in metric, by putting into the computer's metric<==>English translator:

• 142.625" (I could create that in my head) = 3.622675m (for sake of this exercise, I'm ignoring significant digits)
• 3.622675 ÷ eight pieces = .45283438
• Translator gives that as 17.828125"
• Then subtract from that .828125 the 3/16 (Oops! Need calculate or remember that that is .1625!!!) saw kerf
• Giving an inch-fraction of .640625.
• So do I present in 64ths, 32nds, or 16th? Make a decision, and the closest 16th is 10/16ths, which resolves to 5/8"s.
• Remember to put Humpty Dumpty back together, and we get 17 5/8" (or even worse, 1 foot 5 5/8")

OR......

I COULD have measured out that board in meters and done everything in one step.

Yeah. I love the fractional, non-decimal system that effectively only those of us in the US still use.


But I'll get back to the lovely non-decimal system of measuring time some other time. Neat stuff, that!

 

[AudubonB]

You guys crack me up.

"In fact, at 3.240" vs 12.768", Germany's population is 0.25 that of the US"

Maybe you meant to use "MM" as per Mixing use of K for thousands and MM for millions

No. I meant to use "mm". Standard Operating Practice for signifying millions. That author didn't know what he or she was talking about (although there were some humorous lines in the article).

 

[Jays200]

It's all about the capiltalisation of the letter/s

mm = millimetres
MM = millions
MW = megawatt
mW = milliwatt

 

[arcus]

As most recently brought back home yesterday when I was cutting up a fine length of beautiful stock for a cabinet. Unfortunately, it just wasn't a full 12 feet long. It was 11 feet 10 5/8".

This just sounds too familiar. Maybe that is why my garage/workshop carries both types of tools and measurements. Another trivia: 3/4" plywood is actually 23/32", but I prefer to just measure it as 18 mm instead

 

[Brando]

That is only sensible thing to do. There is no way to make 750 million Europeans to change from , to .

I vote for binary. Too long? How about Hexadecimal?

 

[Brando]

That brings up another very important point. A magnificent shibboleth to determine if a writer is either sloppy or ignorant - and those two are by no means mutually exclusive - is to observe inappropriate use (rather than their omission) of significant digits.This latter is, in my experience, far more common than the error you mention. It also is, unfortunately, pervasive through our society, no more tragically so than in intra-scholastic rankings where the difference between a 4.000 average and a 3.998 one means DingleDong1 goes to CalTech and DingleDong2 is banished to (The Horror!) MIT. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE between those two - not unless the school's teachers perform the impossible task of crafting every single grade on every quiz, paper, test, attendance, attitude and posture with those three significant digits. None. Zero. Zilch. Rien. Zettainanimonashi. Nada.

I'd say SLOPPY IGNORANCE for most Americans. Oh, I mean most United Statesers - no offense to our southern brothers.

"significant digits" and then you'll want people to learn what the "scientific method" actually is and then to understand the differences between theories and laws. Oh My God. Philosophy might be next. Logic, Stoicism, etc.... Think we might do that in just 12 years??

 

[Brando]

Now, how about the following? I'm sure you in NoAm recognize what the following represent:

(212) 555-1212
212-555-1212
212.555.1212

(...there must be more, as well). Is one of these preferable to another? Is one abhorrent, or in some way moronic?

I checked my cell phone - mostly it listed names. I suspected those numbers related to phones somehow. Guess I was wrong.
anyway, I did find numbers - but alas, they mostly had a 10th digit, a 1. I let you guess where it is most commonly placed.
Another thing IDD prefixes which were 3 sometimes 4 digits. Communications can be so confusing.

 

[cpa]

We had a metric system segment in math when I was in grade school in the early '60s.

We learned all these prefixes: milli, centi, deci, deka, hecta, kilo.

Yet 55 years later many of them are never used to my knowledge.

I have never seen measurements in decimeters, dekameters or hectameters.

I have never seen measurements in centiliters, deciliters, dekaliters or hectaliters.

I have never seen measurements in centigrams, decigrams, dekagrams or hectagrams.

We go from milliwatts to watts to kilowatts to all the mega, giga, tera, etc watts. No deciwatts or centiwatts?

I see hectares, but nothing else for area. Are there other metric measurements for area besides m^2?

It seems odd to have these measurements that are not used, or perhaps I just read the wrong publications?

Does the metric system have the equivalent of the troy weights for precious metals and gems?

In a humorous vein, I would like to see the resurrection of the grain, gill, rod, chain, rood, bushel, peck, and dry quarts and gallons. We could have some real fun!