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Comment by bxparks

20 hours ago

Can you explain why you wrote '23pc' instead of using the '23%' that was used in the article? It is confusing to me.

I had never seen 'pc' used as a short hand for percent (%) until recently in an article (can't remember where), where they used 'pc' repeatedly. Unfortunately the article was also talking about the 'pence' of money, so I found it impossible to figure out from context whether they were talking about a 'pence' or a 'percent'.

In the US, I have seen 'pct' used instead of '%', but not too frequently. I had never seen 'pc' used until recently.

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bxparks

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lutusp  19 hours ago

> I had never seen 'pc' used as a short hand for percent (%) until recently in an article (can't remember where), where they used 'pc' repeatedly.

A couple of possibilities:

   * For plain-text content that might migrate into a Web page (or emanate from a Web page), the special meaning of '%' in that context might motivate some to avoid the character entirely.
   * When typing on a cell phone, one may want to avoid '%' because it often requires shifting to an alternate character set, typing a non-alpha character, then shifting back.

Still, as you point out, it's confusing.