Why do they use a comma , for a decimal place in Europe?

B

Blastman

Newcomer
I’ve noticed this more lately. In North America and as far as I can tell most of world uses a dot … “.” … to denote the decimal place, for eg … 3.141256 … whereas in Europe they seem to write 3,141256? Why the discrepancy, I thought the decimal place “.” was a universal scientific standard.

If I write 3,001 … … did I just write 3- thousand-and-one … or … 3-point-zero-zero-one? Confusing. :?
 
I think it's just a currency thing mostly over in mainland Europe. As to why they actually do it, I have no idea.
 
And it's a true PITA!

For once there's an American standard that I would be happy if everybody switched to. :D I don't know what standard came first, but as far as I know, it's always been decimal comma here in Sweden. (Probably since before USA existed.)

But I've always liked decimal point better. There's no such thing as nationalized programming languages, so I've got used to decimal points.

So the standard procedure when installing an OS is to set nationalization to Swedish, and then edit the standard number format to decimal point. Too bad though that the comma/point on the numerical key pad still is a comma, which makes it useless. If there's anyone who knows how to switch that key to a point, I'd be grateful if you inform me. This is oh-so-irritating when using an English program where there's a lot of number typing.

Most (all?) engineers I know agree with me, but I don't think the rest of the people see any problem in keeping the commas (rather the oposite).


About it beeing a currency thing:
In Sweden, the "correct" standard is to use decimal comma whenever there's a decimal number, regardles on what it represent. But the idea to group digits 3-by-3 with some mark between, is mostly (only?) from economists.
Economist: 12.345.678,90
Engineer rebel: 12 345 678.90 or 12345678.90
Other: 12 345 678,90 or 12345678,90


PS
Did you know that at least the higher end HP calculators can switch format between decimal point and comma. Reeeealy important feature. :D
 
Basic said:
Engineer Rebel: 12 345 678.90 or 12345678.90
Click to expand...
I remember a time last year when I was reading a section in my Engineering text for a class and it mentioned that we were supposed to groups numbers that way (12 345 678.90) and all I remember thinking was WTF? Who thought that stupid thing up... No one uses that here in the US. I much prefer the 12,345,678.90 convention. It makes reading a large number much much easier as you can pick you the groups easily and know exactly where the decimal point is.
 
Ohh, there's at least something I can disagree on. :D
I don't like 12.345.678,90 , but at least it's better than 12,345,678.90 IMO. As I said, I'm a programmer, and the latter of those formats just screams "this is a list of numbers". Using spaces instead is a more subtle grouping that don't look like a list, but still with clearly visible groups.
 
Totally agree on everything Basic wrote.
Though I think it would be fairly easy switch to go over to dots in Swedish standard too, I think it would be more problematic to make people say "3 punkt 5" for 3.5, rather than "3 komma 5". People would likely still read it out the current way, I know I do.
 
Funny how I never even noticed this... :oops:
So does the NUM Del key on american keyboards have a '.' instead of a ',' then?
 
Lezmaka said:
DarN said:
Funny how I never even noticed this... :oops:
So does the NUM Del key on american keyboards have a '.' instead of a ',' then?
Click to expand...

Yep
Click to expand...

Wow, there's a stupid question. I see Basic already stated that...
Thx for replying anyway :)

Note to self: Read thread properly before posting.
 
Woot!

Many thanks Lezmaka.
Happily running a "Swedish with dot" layout.

........ ohhh ..... and some more .......
:)

Hmmm, maybe I'll try to make a more optimal layout than Qwerty/Dworak/Arensito/whatever. I've always wanted a "programmers layout" :D.
 
Personally I prefer 12,342,234.2 rather than the opposite.

Having said that, I wish we could just get rid of the irratating commas to begin with. As a scientist, its just so much better to view that number as

1.23422342 e 7

What do the commas give you anyway.. A convenient way on the eye to count the exponent. Moreover its only the leading 3 digits that really matter for most people anyway
 
Fred said:
Personally I prefer 12,342,234.2 rather than the opposite.

Having said that, I wish we could just get rid of the irratating commas to begin with. As a scientist, its just so much better to view that number as

1.23422342 e 7

What do the commas give you anyway.. A convenient way on the eye to count the exponent. Moreover its only the leading 3 digits that really matter for most people anyway
Click to expand...
god scientific notation would just suck. As a programmer, i . are better tha , for decimal place. ;)

alter,
epic
 
You know more than anything else it is a matter of what field you are in. Engineers prefer one way, Programmers another, and Scientists yet another way. For the general public though it depends on what portion of the world you are in. Although looking at it from the general public standpoint a comma for a decimal point is just plain strange.
 
Razor04 said:
Although looking at it from the general public standpoint a comma for a decimal point is just plain strange.
Click to expand...

As you yourself stated: It depends on where in the world you live. I guess the general public here in Austria would find a point for the decimal comma strange. ;)
But as a programmer I fully agree with Basic.
 
As to why comma has become the standard, it's probably something about how fast you can produce them with a pen or pencil with a reliable result. Sometimes pens and pencils don't leave much mark if you just put them straight down to the paper, and up again. It's safer to move the pen/pencil a little bit, which makes it a comma.
 
Interesting stuff Basic. I guess the average person never used to run into this stuff until the net came about and people all over the world started conversing on a daily basis. I’d be worried about someone designing a control module for a Mars lander, sending the design over to Europe for manufacturing and having the lander end up on Jupiter. :D

I was reading up about driving on the left side versus right side of the road recently and noticed that in Sweden they drove on the left side of the road until 1967. Here in Canada several provinces actually started driving on the left side and later switched to the right also …

British Columbia: 1 January 1922
New Brunswick: 1 December 1922
Nova Scotia: 15 April 1923
Prince Edward Island: 1 May 1924
Newfoundland drove on the left until 1947, and joined Canada in 1949.

Apparently one of the impetus for changing was that Sweden has a lot of unmarked country roads with Norway. Could lead to confusion … … . Norwegian farmer driving down country road with wife …………

…………. Honning den idiot Svensk fører er pÃ¥ den gale siden av veien.!

.
.
.
.
.
(translated … “Honey that idiot Swedish driver is on the wrong side of the road” …to Norwegian using freetranslation.com). 8)
 
DarN said:
Funny how I never even noticed this... :oops:
So does the NUM Del key on american keyboards have a '.' instead of a ',' then?
Click to expand...


. in the UK too

so, btw its not a US standard its a UK one thankyouverymuch! :D :LOL: - actually that may be a lie, I have no idea what people in the uk were using 30 years ago.

Personally I like 12 345 678.9 if you're going to group the digits at all, I've never liked the idea of sticking commas in, its messy. :?
 
Some history: http://extranet.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/DSME/decimals/SLIMversion/backinfo/metric.htm

Neither decimal point nor decimal comma is really better, but I'd like to see global standardization (including everyone using the SI system and a date/time format ;) ). And because in programming languages, decimal comma is not a viable option, I'd gladly take the decimal point. However, I absolutely hate the comma grouping. 1,234,567.89 looks terrible.
 
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