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Comment by kissickas | Hacker News Reader

Forgive me for being slightly snobby (and maybe too tangential), but I always find it completely off-putting when people try to be "hip" and put the $ sign after a number (as in 1$ here; they're also internally inconsistent).

I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on the matter, especially if you think I'm misinterpreting the motivation behind it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_symbol#Usage

edit: Muphry's Law, and trying hard not to ask why people are downvoting my curiosity (but failing)

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> I'd like to hear other peoples' thoughts on the matter, especially if you think I'm misinterpreting the motivation behind it.

Author is from a culture where the currency symbol goes after the sum, does not realise it's before in the US. Internal inconsistency likely linked to multiple authors and lack of review.

Since when is putting the currency sign in the "wrong" place "hip"? Why would you assume such a thing instead of a honest mistake? You even linked to a page stating:

> many [non-anglo non-latin-american cultures] place [the currency sign] after the amount

(note that contrary to this article's exact wording, this is cultural rather than currency-based, within the EU some countries put the € symbol before the amount, others after: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_issues_concerning_th... — and this is not solely linked to english-speaking, Austria uses prefix where Germany uses postfix; Denmark and Latvia use prefix, ...)

I have a friend who thinks it's "younger" to put it afterwards, and I figured the designers of this site might be from the same generation, as are a few (younger) HNers. I did read the page I linked, that's why I linked it.

I've made this mistake quite a few times coming from Hebrew, where the currency symbol (₪) is written after the number (it is to the left, but the direction of writing is right-to-left). It is possible that the people who wrote this are used to putting the currency symbol after the number, and especially since it's inconsistent it is probably a mistake.

I think it's far more likely that the author is from a place which puts the currency symbol after the number and simply made a mistake. I've never seen or heard of anybody intentionally doing it incorrectly for effect.

> internally inconsistent

You mean, "internally consistent"? As in "How much is it?" "One dollar." -> "1$". That's how the (spoken) language works.

Pretty sure the intention here was to say that the author uses "$1" in some places and "1$" in others. I'd verify this, but I can't get to the site.

No, I mean internally inconsistent. I had to point out that I meant it in the case of the button that said "1$" but not the rest of the website, where it said "$299" or whatever. Site down.

They're downvoting you because it has nothing to do with "hipness", it's just the way it's done in some cultures.

Thanks for using words. I am happy to know something I didn't know yesterday... I just don't know why instead of getting answers to the question I asked ("Is my perception of the motive incorrect?"), I got downvotes. Especially when my comment about knowing someone personally who does it for "hipness" got an equal number of downvotes. Anecdotes are not suitable data for proving conclusions, but I would think they are suitable for disproving generalities.

I apologize for complaining about downvotes - I'm just very surprised and disappointed that some innocent curiosity is getting such a vehemently arrogant reception.

You should've started off with the hedging or formed your hypothesis as a question if you were unsure. People aren't going to read past the presumptuous claim to see if you walked it back - they're just going to hit the downvote button.

Also, I don't appreciate your thanking me as a way of passive-aggressively casting judgment on other downvoters. Nobody owes it to you to explain their downvote. I get that it was unexpected and kind of dismaying, but that doesn't mean drive-by downvoting was the wrong thing to do here.

Thanks for the feedback. Still coping with the last sentence, but I appreciate that you took the time to reply.

Usually done by people who are not from a country where the currency symbol is after the sum.

Is there a country where it is usual to put the percent sign before the number? I sometimes see things like "%100 performance increase" on English web sites, and I wonder where that comes from.

Persian, at least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent_sign#Spacing

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