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Comment by graypegg | Hacker News Reader

There are specific subsets of English that are used in certain domains that have standards bodies behind them, like Simplified Technical English for aviation. It even has a working group! [0]

VOA also have a Learning English spec for broadcast english [1] but that seems to be a lot looser of a spec.

So it's definitely not impossible. The funny thing, is I remember being told in grade school that in English Canada, I was to write numbers with a space as the thousands separator. `$10 000.00`, instead of `$10,000.00`. This is because french Canada uses a comma as a decimal point, `10 000.00 $`, so a space is non ambiguous. I have rarely ever seen the English space format in use here. I don't think English speakers would respect any authority if it wasn't as domain-scoped as Aviation or Learning english.

[0] https://www.asd-ste100.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_English_(version_of_E...

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FWIW while comma vs period for decimal fractions is a point of significant variability globally, the use of comma to group digits is fairly uncommon, whereas period is universally understood as a decimal separator even in countries where comma is normally used for that purpose (thanks to calculators and computers). And, on the other hand, space-separated groups are self-explanatory for those used to comma for that purpose. So using spaces for grouping + period for fractions is indeed the way to go to maximum readability worldwide.

The use of a space as a thousands separator has been around since the 1940s as recommended by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures and it was what we used when I was a kid at school in the UK. They specified it should be a thin (half) space.

https://www.bipm.org/documents/20126/28433818/working-docume...

No I know, it's also part of the French standard. Just more so commenting on how uncommon it is from Canadian English speakers despite it being the Canadian English "standard" recommend by a Canadian entity similar to the French or German standards bodies.

It's interesting now to see more and more programming languages using an underscore as the thousands separator to allow for easier reading without trying to get into a mess of commas or full-stops as separators.

> So it's definitely not impossible.

Well, it's definitely not impossible to publish a document declaring itself the standard form of english.

But I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to get english speakers to comply - or even to get any countries to make the standard legally binding.

Imagine either England or the USA accepting to vary their language towards a common standard. I expect strong opposition would stem from pride.

Judging from how well adopting SI went (is going in the UK?) sadly it seems impossible :(

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