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Comment by interactivecode | Hacker News Reader

I read that "88.318 meters" as 88 kilometers and was kinda impressed. then I realized they use periods has commas.

Haha or we'd say you use periods as commas :-)

For others who don't know, for me (American), a period means a decimal value and a comma separates between thousands. I think in some parts of Europe it's the opposite, where the period separates thousands and the comma means a decimal value.

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!

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.

> 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!?!

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.

IMO the European(?) convention makes sense insofar as the higher-level separator is visually more prominent.

It gets even more funky here in Europe... "In Germany, it is a period (.). Thus one thousand and twenty-five is displayed as 1,025 in the United States and 1.025 in Germany. In Sweden, the thousands separator is a space"[1]

[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/globalization/locale/numbe...

Can we maybe just agree on using underscores as a thousands separator?

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