this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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[–] joan@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Why do europeans put silly commas as decimal points ??

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Europeans, you say?

Yeah, I know, it's still less than 1/3 of the total, but it's used in several continents.

[–] MisterFrog@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I just hurts my soul that it's inconsistent.

By population decimal point wins?

I don't really care which, but my heart craves standardisation*

(*where it makes sense. I don't think language based differences in how many digits between separators needs to be world-wide. Eg. In East Asia you separate in groups of 4 digits, not 3 because of language)

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I'd be willing to give up my habit, but imagine the DECADES of constant confusion, mistakes and accidents because 8 years into the change you need to figure out whether the right number is 4.827 or 4,827 in the document you're looking at... And now you need to investigate the creation date.

[–] MisterFrog@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

Eh, it's already fairly obvious using both systems side by side across the internet.

Though I suppose in actual work you're correct. I use 3 decimal places for metres on drawings a lot, because I like it to be easy to read the mm.

It being 1,000 m or 1.000 m is of course a huge difference haha

A boy can dream 🥹

[–] joan@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Fine... europeans and south americans... /j

[–] NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Why do Americans put silly decimal points as commas??

[–] MisterFrog@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I don't really care which, but if I'm not mistaken it's the majority of the world population in this case not just the US.

[–] NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)
[–] MisterFrog@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

But commas and dots don't form part of the metric system?

Ihr könnt gerne umwechseln wenn ihr wollt :3

My main argument for the English/Chinese/Indian system (I have no idea where this system originated), is that in many languages (including German), commas function as pauses and full stops (period, by the Americans) as a stronger separator between thoughts, so it makes more sense to seperate digits with commas (in my opinion)

It's all ultimately arbitrary, and I don't really care which we pick.

[–] peteypete420@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Thats really a thing?