Question on European Numerical Formatting, Prachett, and 'Going Postal'

[reanjr]

[nitpick] Actually, the Americans use the same format as the Brits. The Brits were first with it, after all. [/nitpick]

I thought the Americans invented math...

Oh, well. One more nick off my national pride.

Just to clarify something, £4.99 is generally said "four pounds ninety-nine", correct?

 

[MonsterMash]

I thought the Americans invented math...

Oh, well. One more nick off my national pride.

Just to clarify something, £4.99 is generally said "four pounds ninety-nine", correct?

That's right, we wouldn't normally say pence unless its for a sum less than a pound and normally it tends to be said as '"pee" so something for 99pence would often be referred to as costing "ninety-nine pee", pence would more likely be used in a more upmarket setting (at least in London and southern england), there are often regional variations.

 

[Eremite]

I thought the Americans invented math... (snip)

Yes, Americans did invent math. Maths, however, was invented by others.

 

[Gez]

Spaces would be more difficult for parsing and nigh impossible to write out by hand.

More difficult for parsing? I don't see how. As long as the digits are grouped together by packets of 3, there are no problems.

Impossible to write out by hand? As impossible as "writing" spaces between words in a handwritten text.

 

[Gez]

Oh, and wouldn't that just work brilliantly in written notation. :insert rolleyes smiley here: Computer scientists often pimp that sort of thing. Computer scientists also wrote Windows, which shows how much their opinions should be valued in this sort of thing.

Actually, Microsoft Windows wasn't written by computer scientists, but by bean-counters.

Computer scientists wrote Multics and BeOS.

 

[Thanee]

Does any country besides the UK and US use Imperial, anyways?

Bye
Thanee

 

[DragonSword]

If I were king of the world, I'd set the notation to this format: 123 456 789.10111213, as it is the one that uses the less graphical clutter. A space to separate thousands, a simple dot for the decimal separator.

Actually that's how they're teaching it in British schools nowadays. Me, I prefer commas.

Does any country besides the UK and US use Imperial, anyways?

Don't think so, but the UK is slowly being metric-fied. Come on, Imperial is soooo last millenium!