Comment by lutusp

> 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.