________________________________
From: Marc Paré <m...@marcpare.com>
To: documentation@libreoffice.org
Sent: Sat, 19 February, 2011 13:33:37
Subject: [libreoffice-documentation] Re: Use of "Euro" "Euros" "euro" "euros"
and thousand separator and decimal point
Le 2011-02-19 06:34, Marc Paré a écrit :
> Some of us on the marketing and USmarketing teams are having a
> discussion on usage and I thought that perhaps someone on the
> documentation team could help us.
>
> 1. Use of "Euro". It was pointed out that the European Community had
> issued its verdict saying that "Euro" should not be pluralized (i.e.
> "Euros") in any situation. So, should we then standardize our use of
> "Euro" to this for all documentation, website and marketing materials?
>
> There was also a discussion, with no decision about the treatment of the
> word "Euro". Would we write: 50 000 euro or 50 000 Euro or should we
> rather write Euro 50 000 or euro 50 000 or EU50 000 ?
>
> 2. The setting of the the thousand separator and the decimal point.
> There seems to be multiple acceptable usages. For example all of the
> following seem to be correct:
>
> 50 000.05
> 50,000.05
> 50.000,05
> 50 000.05
> 50.000,05
>
> Is there an already "agreed to" use of the thousand separator and
> decimal point for the LibreOffice documentation team?
>
> We could coordinate this throughout our documentation, website and
> marketing teams.
>
> References:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Decimal_separator
> (this is Wikipedia's style manual -- do we have a LibreOffice style
> manual that the documentation team follows?)
>
> Cheers
>
> Marc
>
>
Thanks to all for your advice.
Cheers
Marc
--
Hi :)
i think the general case for English speaking users and perhaps 'most' of
Europe
is to use a comma "," as separator for thousands, millions etc and a full stop
"." as a decimal point. So, examples would be
50, 000, 000.05 or far more usually
50,000,000.05
Also if there are columns of numbers then it is better to line up the units.
Things like
503
50
5,560
are sloppy but sometimes it is too time-consuming to use the proper tab-stops
or
tables with number-cells right-aligned instead of left-aligned.
Levels of precision used in examples has been ridiculous. We really don't need
more than 2 significant figures although we often go to 3 or 4. Most of the
examples have gone to 7 and my first two went to 10! Usually people use "k" or
"K" or "x10^3" for thousands but sometimes people have been sloppy and just
used
000's which is appalling imo.
Machines based on binary use 1024 as the closest number to 1k but since
salesmen
got hold of that we have no idea whether
1k = 1,024 or 1,000 or 1,000/1,024k
especially because different programs use different methods.
When we get to 1,000,000 being represented by "M" (NOT "m") or "x10^6" we have
no idea whether
1M = 1,024,000 or 1,048,576 or the wrong ways around.
For Gb it's much worse of course. There is nothing we can do to try to clear
this up except to realise that quoting numbers beyond 2 significant figures is
inaccurate or misleading.
In accountancy end-of-year accounts are signed-off as being "true and fair" NOT
"precise" and not "accurate" either!
Regards from
Tom :)
--
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