It further reaffirmed that numbers may be divided in groups of three in order to facilitate reading neither dots nor commas are ever inserted in the spaces between groups 22 (e.g. Interlingua has used the comma as its decimal separator since the publication of the Interlingua Grammar in 1951.Įsperanto also uses the comma as its official decimal separator, while thousands are separated by non-breaking spaces: 12 345 678,9. In the event, the point was chosen by the Ministry of Technology in 1968. In some countries, a raised dot or dash ( upper comma ) may be used for grouping or decimal separator this is particularly common in handwriting.ĭuring the beginning of British metrication in the late 1960s and with impending currency decimalisation, there was some debate in the United Kingdom as to whether the decimal comma or decimal point should be preferred: the British Standards Institution and some sectors of industry advocated the comma and the Decimal Currency Board advocated for the point. Tables of logarithms prepared by John Napier in 16 used the period (full stop) as the decimal separator, which was then adopted by Henry Briggs in his influential 17th century work. His Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing presented the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations in Arabic.įibonacci followed this convention when writing numbers such as in his influential work Liber Abaci in the 13th century.

When this character was typeset, it was convenient to use the existing comma (99, 95) or full stop (99. L-shaped or vertical bar () served as the separatrix in England. Later, a separatrix (a short, roughly vertical ink stroke) between the units and tenths position became the norm among Arab mathematicians (e.g. In the Middle Ages, before printing, a bar ( ) over the units digit was used to separate the integral part of a number from its fractional part, e.g.Ī similar notation remains in common use as an underbar to superscript digits, especially for monetary values without a decimal separator, e.g. In mathematics, the decimal separator is a type of radix point, a term that also applies to number systems with bases other than ten. Symbol-specific names are also used decimal point and decimal comma refer to an (either baseline or middle ) dot and comma respectively, when it is used as a decimal separator these are the usual terms used in English, 1 2 3 with the aforementioned generic terms reserved for abstract usage. The choice of symbol also affects the choice of symbol for the thousands separator used in digit grouping.

Belgian Keyboard Comma Or Period Manual Of Styleĭifferent countries officially designate different symbols for use as the separator.

Belgian keyboard comma or period