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Comment by nubinetwork

3 hours ago

Can we start using a comma as a thousands separator instead of a period?

Period is the thousands separator and comma is the decimal separator in almost all European countries.

  • We checked this before going live and came to the same conclusion. We also discovered that the official languages of the EU are all 24 languages, but we chose to write the post in English and not AI-translate it.

In most (all?) European countries comma is the decimal separator

  • I skimmed https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator but still don't understand. Why does this difference exist? Also, why did the conflict eventually settle into something between full stops and commas? What stopped other symbols from continued usage like bars or underscores?

    It seems weird that a system would eventually settle on just full stops and commas, yet not settle on where to put them. If your system is going to converge strongly on two symbols, finish the job!

    • > Why does this difference exist?

      Same reason why there are different date formats, weeks start on Sundays/Mondays (or Saturdays), long/short scale numbers, drives on left/right, different wall sockets and plugs, different train gauges, and of course metric/imperial.

      It's a mix of tradition, conventions, inertia.

    • Because in English you say "three dot two", whereas in German it is "Drei-Komma-Zwei".

      It just reflects the spoken language. And having the unused symbol then be the thousand separator is natural.

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