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Comment by thrdbndndn | Hacker News Reader

About this specific case: I also never knew using ".5" to mean "0.5" is a thing, until I lived in the US.

Not sure if it's a US thing or Western world thing, my country (not Japan, but also in East Asia) just doesn't use it.

It's not particularly common in Canada, although I do see it occasionally. The principal problem is that a dot (especially handwritten) is easy to miss, whereas an unexpected leading zero induces the reader to check for a dot.

I don't press the zero button on my calculator when inputting values, though, since it's an extra keystroke for literally nothing.

That's surprising. People don't say stuff like "try setting power level to point three"? Do they use a different word for the decimal separator?

Nope, we always say "zero point three" (in our native language, of course).

While I tend to use the verbal shortcut, your way is much less likely to be misinterpreted.

"Set the power to point three" sounds the same orally as "Set the power two point three"

The zero makes it unambiguous.

It also helps that in my language, zero, point, and all the numbers are all one-syllable, hehe

"to" is often reduced to something like "tuh", whereas "two" never is.

Except in deliberate word-by-word pronunciation, "one two three" and "one to three" sound different in native US English.

Tangently related... In drafting, with metric numbers a leading zero is required. With English Numbers, omitting the leading zero is proper.

Product of the English system here: what are "English numbers"?

I've never seen 0.5 written ".5" going back to Principia.

In the drafting world, inch units are commonly referred to as English. So if things are drafted properly, .500 would be 1/2 an inch and 0.5 would be 1/2 a millimeter.

(Things are rarely drafted according to specs.)

I wonder if it's a difference between countries that use the comma to indicate the decimal vs a period. The comma also being used for separating values in a list might make omitting the zero more confusing. I've generally noticed a higher eagerness to abbreviate in the US though.

I picked this up from Excel as it defaults to adding the 0 in "general" formatting.

Without a decimal it will strip leading zeros by default, a setting that has caused me hours of frustration over the years.

Probably your calculators all support it.

Yeah they do, just didn't know this notation (convention?).

Oddly, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed the zero being omitted except casually or to save space in a table, in English. I would expect ordinary writing to include the zero.

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