There actually is an International Standard on this (ISO-31-0), have a look at:
http://www.answers.com/topic/iso-31
which states:
* Numbers consisting of long sequences of digits can be made more readable
by separating them into groups, preferably groups of three, separated by a
small space. ISO 31-0 specifies that such groups of digits should never be
separated by a comma or point, as these are reserved for use as the decimal
sign.
* ISO 31-0 specifies that the decimal sign is the comma on the baseline,
but recognizes that in English documents a dot on the line is also commonly
used.
Christian Iversen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Monday 18 July 2005 00:18, Hubert Chan wrote:
> > On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 22:22:32 +0200, Christian Iversen
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> > >> In particular, in French, period is for the thousands separator, and
> > >> comma is the decimal point.
> > >
> > > AFAIK it's the same in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, The
> > > Netherlands, and in fact most of Europe.
> >
> > I'm wondering if it's based mostly on region or language. For example,
> > I know that for the English-speaking portion of North America, we use
> > comma for the thousands separator. But for the French-speaking
> > population (e.g. Quebec), or when writing in French, comma is the
> > decimal separator.
> >
> > Do Swedes, Norwegians, etc. use period as the thousands separator even
> > when writing in English?
>
> No, that wouldn't make sense :-)
>
> I think it's true that it's language-based.
>
> To make matters worse though, I've seen some exams with a mixed
> danish/english
> contents use both within a few lines of text. And on top of that, it's
> sometimes reversed because "," is used as a logical seperator in many
> programming langauges.
>
> But it's probably safe to say that outside of physics (and even there it
> would
> be odd), 123.456 is "1 dot 23456 * 10^5"
>
> --
> Regards,
> Christian Iversen
Regards
Kris Van Bruwaene
*** Disclaimer ***
Deze e-mail, met eventuele bijlagen, is alleen bestemd voor de persoon of
organisatie aan wie hij gericht is en, in voorkomend geval, alleen voor het
daarin opgegeven doel of gebruik. Hij kan vertrouwelijke informatie bevatten
en/of persoonlijke standpunten die niet noodzakelijk met die van de VRT
stroken. Elk gebruik van deze informatie (zoals bewerken, doorsturen, geheel of
gedeeltelijk reproduceren of verspreiden in welke vorm ook) door anderen dan de
geadresseerde, is verboden. Hebt U deze e-mail per vergissing ontvangen, meld
dat dan a.u.b. aan de VRT en wis de e-mail.
