The only numbers I will ever spell are one and zero, and only when using them as a pronoun, or for emphasis, respectively.

Is there ever a reason to not to use symbols when dealing with numbers? Why would “fourteen whatevers” ever be preferable to “14 whatevers”. It’s just so much easier to read numbers as symbols, not spelled out.

(Caveat, not including multipliers, like “273 billion”).

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      I’m not a fan of how this isn’t standardised across the world either.

      It obviously isn’t a big deal, but he’s my counter argument for fun.

      Commas are the more logical option as they already serve as breaks within a sentence.

      It’s fairly common across many languages for punctuation to use commas for short breaks within a sentence, and periods/full stops to be used to finish a sentence. It’s so common because even languages that didn’t use these symbols becore, have now adopted it (Chinese comes to mind).

      Commas as a separator within the same number fit better into this existing structure, in my opinion.

      Dots being used for decimals seems more consistent with this system also, since the difference between units and negative powers feels greater than just seperating digits into groups.

      Further (without having actually looked at statistics on this, I could be wrong about this) it’s only Europe who use dots to separate groupings of digits, and commas for decimals.

      If this is in fact the case, you (assuming you’re European) ought to switch to the majority’s system so we can have consistency.

      Fair is fair ;)

      Edit to add: I’m Australian

      • PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        I like that you take this up just for fun 🙂

        And you provide valid arguments. As I was reading your response, I was thinking of how there can be multiple commas in a sentence but only one period. That fits your style.

        Yes I am in Europe and it’s not even standard here, for instance the Swiss use ’ as a thousands separator and I don’t know what they do for decimals.

        “My” European style is also used in Japan, and they use the metric system, but US voltage and plugs.

        We live in a messy world 🙂

        • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
          2·
          1 month ago

          Swiss use ’ as a thousands separator

          TIL

          Appreciate your response friend. I look forward to a day where we standardise this, but we probably never will (and that’s probably fine haha)

          As cursed number formats go, India is the worst that comes to my mind:

          • European languages: 123,456,789 (groups of 103)
          • East Asia: 1,2345,6789 (groups of 104)

          Logical smooth sailing.

          • India: 12,34,56,789

          0_0 Why must you do this to me?

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system