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A comment on Boeing Engineers Set a New Record for Paper Plane Distance. Parent comment

Re:Boeing Engineers Set a New Record for Paper Plane Distance by Terretta on Friday March 03, 2023 @12:27PM (#35012584)
And since, in both US and EU, in written sentences a comma is a somewhat optional boundary between continuations of a phrase, while period is a full stop also called a point, and since on a number line the zero point is that full stop point between positive and negative while successive orders of magnitude 1000s, 1000000s, etc. are only optionally delimited ...

... this is the one difference between EU and US numbering and units where EU is just wrong. :-)

Edit: I see below the Swedes are even more wrong. Bork bork bork!

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Re:Boeing Engineers Set a New Record for Paper Plane Distance by mijamo on Friday March 03, 2023 @12:47PM (#35012801)
It is not EU vs US. Countries have different norms. In France for instance the thousand separator is a simple space, no comma or dot. And the reason for the comma instead of the dot comes from mathematics to avoid confusion with the multiplication sign · when writing.
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Re:Boeing Engineers Set a New Record for Paper Plane Distance by frosted-flakes on Friday March 03, 2023 @01:56PM (#35013569)
Canada also uses a space as a thousands separator, while English Canada uses a decimal point and French Canada uses a decimal comma. The use of a space as a thousands separator is explicitly to reduce confusion and ambiguity.
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Re:Boeing Engineers Set a New Record for Paper Plane Distance by Terretta on Friday March 03, 2023 @05:58PM (#35016183)
> the reason for the comma instead of the dot comes from mathematics to avoid confusion with the multiplication sign · when writing

I've heard that, but I think it's trying to back into a rationale since it makes no sense, people do multiply by 3 digit numbers.

FWIW, when I was in grade school in France, no, we didn't separate thousands by space. Then again, my school was on the border with Switzerland, so *shrug* who knows!?!

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Re:Boeing Engineers Set a New Record for Paper Plane Distance by layer8 on Friday March 03, 2023 @03:32PM (#35014642)
IMO the European(?) convention makes sense insofar as the higher-level separator is visually more prominent.
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