I do a tax return for a guy who has some income in India. Their overall number formatting is so foreign to me, when I did this guy's return for the first time, I had to screenshot a couple of the numbers and send them to an Indian friend of mine to ask what the hell the number was.
So after the first 3 zeroes, it's a comma every second zero. And there are local names for those denominations.
So
10
100
1,000
10,000
1,00,000 = 1 Lakh or 1 Lac
10,00,000 = 10 Lakhs/Lacs
1,00,00,000 = 1 Crore
People generally don't use the next set of names which are called 1 Arab and then 1 Kharab and probably a few more, they just start saying 1000 crores or lakhs of crore etc.
Many people also use millions and billions instead of the above.
And then decimals are denoted by a period, not commas.
Kind of related, our financial year is from 1st April till 31st March, so you gotta watch out for quarter numbers not matching. Our financial Q1 is the calendar Q2...
While I never enjoy the fiscal years some other countries use, I'm accustomed enough to work with them. It was the comma notation you've laid out that threw me the first time I saw it.
Yes, they missed the word "dot" (as long as we can trust the unsourced Wikipedia list they probably used, I cannot find another English-language source confirming that). I was just kidding (as indicated by "/s").
100 times. I do everything in English on my computer and for some reason that day my banking session was opened in French. So it ignored the decimal point for cents in the number I entered. I asked to transfer 160.50 bucks (or whatever the exact number was), and it transferred 16 050 instead. Luckily I could fix it with a phone call.
And it's wrong, though. In Russia, we use space to separate thousands (with the exception of 4 digit numbers) - 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10 000, 100 000, 1 000 000 etc. People who care about formatting use a special thin space instead.
For decimal point, commas are used in bureaucratic environments because of some GOST or something, while normal people use dots, because windows calculator doesn't accept commas, and neither does Excel if I'm not mistaken. So it's kind of both on that front.
i just use an apostrophe, why make things complicated? 1'000'000.00 should be unambigous to almost everyone, provided they can rub some braincells together.
Reminded of a fun story on r/HFY which the author has posted to ![email protected] that explicitly deals with different countries using different characters to separate decimals from integers.
That story makes no sense, if you want to order 98 of something you'd write 98, not 98,000 or 98.000, no matter what decimal separater you prefer, especially for something where ordering a fraction makes no sense.
But I never put commas or points into the contract?”
Either he put 98000, or he wrote 98 and some spreadsheet autoformatter changed it to 98.000 and he never noticed because he's not supposed to be a competent character.
In the end I just took it as a fun story, but I get finding something unrealistic, it not passing your willing suspension of disbelief, and pulling you out of the story and making it hard to enjoy.
Yep that's the irony of English systems, it's only them and their colonies and ex colonies that even consider it. Left hand drive and measuring system using variable size biological parts included.
I'm under the impression that for Switzerland, we normally use "," (or at least for handwriting, that's how I learned to write it at least) but because of shitty locale support, people use "." on computers
Ah yes. Blue, green and green. The ideal chart colours.
Blue, green, and blue greeen
I do a tax return for a guy who has some income in India. Their overall number formatting is so foreign to me, when I did this guy's return for the first time, I had to screenshot a couple of the numbers and send them to an Indian friend of mine to ask what the hell the number was.
So after the first 3 zeroes, it's a comma every second zero. And there are local names for those denominations.
So
10
100
1,000
10,000
1,00,000 = 1 Lakh or 1 Lac
10,00,000 = 10 Lakhs/Lacs
1,00,00,000 = 1 Crore
People generally don't use the next set of names which are called 1 Arab and then 1 Kharab and probably a few more, they just start saying 1000 crores or lakhs of crore etc.
Many people also use millions and billions instead of the above.
And then decimals are denoted by a period, not commas.
Kind of related, our financial year is from 1st April till 31st March, so you gotta watch out for quarter numbers not matching. Our financial Q1 is the calendar Q2...
While I never enjoy the fiscal years some other countries use, I'm accustomed enough to work with them. It was the comma notation you've laid out that threw me the first time I saw it.
I hope NASA checks Peruvians' math before they accept their contributions to Artemis /s
Does decimal here mean (decimal) dot or do they not use decimal numbers/fractions?
Yes, they missed the word "dot" (as long as we can trust the unsourced Wikipedia list they probably used, I cannot find another English-language source confirming that). I was just kidding (as indicated by "/s").
French Canadian. I once accidentally transferred WAY too much money in a banking transaction because of this.
Oh dear. Presumably 1000x too much?
100 times. I do everything in English on my computer and for some reason that day my banking session was opened in French. So it ignored the decimal point for cents in the number I entered. I asked to transfer 160.50 bucks (or whatever the exact number was), and it transferred 16 050 instead. Luckily I could fix it with a phone call.
How many of the comma countries use the word for “point” when reading the decimal?
None?
The ~ value for pi would be said: "Three point one four."
$3.14/$3,14 ="three fourteen"
In Canada
Dutch doesn't, why would anyone write a comma but say "point"?
Nul komma nul
Why would we say that?
There's a comma, we say comma. Otherwise would be confusing.
There’s a period in English, but we don’t say period. We say point.
I was wondering about French because they also have the word “point”, but looking it up they say “and” or sometimes “comma”.
A point is a dot though. Isn't it? In spanish "punto" means "dot". It probably comes from latin.
In portuguese point and period are the same word "ponto"
1 234 567,89 or 1234567,89
Thank you very much
Do you call it the 'decimal comma'?
Greenland and Russia making the blue solution look much more common than it really is (in terms of population).
The map projection (Mercator?) certainly doesn't help with that.
And it's wrong, though. In Russia, we use space to separate thousands (with the exception of 4 digit numbers) - 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10 000, 100 000, 1 000 000 etc. People who care about formatting use a special thin space instead.
For decimal point, commas are used in bureaucratic environments because of some GOST or something, while normal people use dots, because windows calculator doesn't accept commas, and neither does Excel if I'm not mistaken. So it's kind of both on that front.
I've always used a point on top of the numbers to avoid confusion, i.e. 1`000`000,00
The map is wrong in that regard anyway, because quite a lot of languages/countries actually use a space or half-space as a thousand separator.
The map doesn't mention a thousand separator...
But it shows areas and how numbers are suposedly formatted in those areas and those numbers have thousand separators.
But it specifically only talks about separating the integer from the decimal. How can it be wrong about something it doesn't talk about at all?
Not to mention that the Arabic world writes numbers with their own script:
۱٬۲۳٤٬٥٦۷٫۸۹
(Yes, that's the official thousands separator U+060C and the official decimal separator U+060B and they do look suspisciously similar.)
Especially pointing at Russia... They couldn't even look at the Examples section of the Wikipedia article they obviously used.
i just use an apostrophe, why make things complicated? 1'000'000.00 should be unambigous to almost everyone, provided they can rub some braincells together.
You'd think so, but I've seen people do 1.350'78. in their mind, it's to avoid confusion too.
You'd think so, but I've seen people do 1.350'78. in their mind, it's to avoid confusion too.
Ugh. I always thought the usa needed to go metric, but I have a hard time with thus difference
The US finally on the “most of the world does it this way, get with the program” side of the argument for once
This one isn't as clear cut though. Most of the population uses dot. But most countries use comma.
Am French-Canadian, I never used commas as a decimal separator..
Always wrote it like 1 234 567.89 or 1234567.89.
French communities I've been in when in the prairies seem to do it differently shop by shop, often mixing things together.
3,95$
$3,95
$3.95$
$3,95$
$3.95
3.95$
Reminded of a fun story on r/HFY which the author has posted to ![email protected] that explicitly deals with different countries using different characters to separate decimals from integers.
That story makes no sense, if you want to order 98 of something you'd write 98, not 98,000 or 98.000, no matter what decimal separater you prefer, especially for something where ordering a fraction makes no sense.
Either he put 98000, or he wrote 98 and some spreadsheet autoformatter changed it to 98.000 and he never noticed because he's not supposed to be a competent character.
In the end I just took it as a fun story, but I get finding something unrealistic, it not passing your willing suspension of disbelief, and pulling you out of the story and making it hard to enjoy.
We write that like this: 98,- but usually in financial contexts/money. You see this used in stores to indicate rounded prices, too.
And that's why cheques and contracts also express critical numbers in words.
Hmm, the polar bears must do something really weird.
One more case of England vs everyone else.
Unless of course you count the majority of the worlds population that also use the
.Yep that's the irony of English systems, it's only them and their colonies and ex colonies that even consider it. Left hand drive and measuring system using variable size biological parts included.
Japan was never a colony.
Of course, I misspelled neocolonialism
I'm under the impression that for Switzerland, we normally use "," (or at least for handwriting, that's how I learned to write it at least) but because of shitty locale support, people use "." on computers
Other parts of the world I can understand, but how did most of Europe end up being so incredibly wrong on which separator to use?
They do something different than me, therefore they are wrong.
Yes that's what I said.