Do you use comma or dot to mark thousands?

Indonesia
February 11, 2010 12:33am CST
Hi all, I know there are difference in several countries on writing decimals or thousands. In my country, we use dot to mark thousands and comma to mark decimals. UK and US use comma to mark thousands and dot to mark decimals. I wonder why this difference happened. Which one used by Greeks since they are the inventor of today's number right? Or please correct if I got the wrong fact :)
7 responses
@dorannmwin (36392)
• United States
13 Feb 10
In school we learned to use commas to seperate the thousands, millions, billions, etc. and to use a period to denote the decimal point. For example, if I was writing the number one million three hundred sixty thousand two hundred thirty three dollars and fifteen cents it would look like $1,360,233.15. If I was to interchange the commas and the periods it would really make me confused because there can only be one decimal point in a number that you are writing.
• Indonesia
16 Feb 10
Hi dorann, it was taught the other way around in Indonesia. I use comma to sign thousands and dots to sign decimal numbers. For example if I want to write 1 million, I'll write 1.000.000,00. Anyway, i found this explanation from wiki The following examples show the decimal separator and the thousands separator; the lists are ordered chronologically, by when each country adopted the use: In Serbia[citation needed], Croatia, Bosnia, Estonia, France, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and much of Latin Europe as well as French Canada: 1 234 567,89 (In Spain, in handwriting it is also common to use an upper comma: 1.234.567'89)[citation needed] In Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Romania, Sweden and much of Europe: 1 234 567,89 or 1.234.567,89 (in handwriting, 1?234?567,89 is also seen[citation needed], but never in Denmark or Sweden) In the Netherlands: for currencies the thousands separator is a dot, e.g. EUR 1.234.567,89, but for other numbers a (narrow) space is used, e.g. 1 234 567,89 In Switzerland: 1'234'567.89; for thousand separator an apostrophe is used. In Australia, English Canada, Israel, Japan, Korea (both), Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States: 1,234,567.89 or 1,234,567ยท89; the latter is more commonly found in older, and especially handwritten, documents; many British and Canadian schools now teach the SI style with a dot separator, which has become official in Australia. Australia also now teaches the use of a space as a thousands separator i.e. 1 234 567.89 SI style: 1 234 567.89 or 1 234 567,89 (in their own publications the dot is used in the English version and the comma in the French version). In Chinese, comma and space are used to mark digit groups because dot is used as decimal separator. There is no universal convention on digit grouping, so both thousands grouping and no digit grouping can be found. However, grouping can also be done every four digits: 123,4567.89, since names for large numbers in Chinese are based on powers of 10,000 (e.g. the next new word is for 108). Japan is similar.
@dgtempe1 (87)
• United States
12 Feb 10
I think some countries have their own rules. I use commas, but i have seen people use dots.
@hobohobo (678)
• Indonesia
11 Feb 10
in my country we use dot to mark thousand, but really i don't find the different but maybe it will make trouble when we use to convert our currency with other currency
@p3ks626 (6538)
• Philippines
11 Feb 10
I think those are really the rules when it comes to using commas and dots. Comma to say thousands and dot to say decimals. It would be very confusing if you interchange that and the tendency is, you will not be understood if you would use something not common to all.
@phoenix8606 (4942)
11 Feb 10
gemballa - porsche gemballa
hi ! No, I don't use any commas or dots to mark the thousands and the millions. I just write them together or with a space between the numbers!
• Singapore
11 Feb 10
I always used dot to mark decimals. As for comma to mark thousands, I only start seeing it when I came to Singapore. In China, we don't use commas to mark thousand. The origins of numbers comes from Arabic, not Greeks. I'm not sure how the difference happened actually.
@Hazelrose (2179)
• Philippines
11 Feb 10
Hi sophisticated_boy,Yes of course,I use comma or dot to mark thousands,to makes the figures complete.For example; 200,000.00. I am here in the Philippines,and we used to it. Have a nice day!