Re: [Gretl-users] The usage of "," and ";" and "." in Europe

On Thu, 28 Jan 2010, Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti wrote: > On Thu, 28 Jan 2010, Talha Yalta wrote: > >> So my question is: How common is the use of comma as the decimal >> seperator in econometric texts in other European countries? > > In this country, the recent tendency is to freely use the comma or the dot > and let the reader guess, which is not difficult in most cases. I am a bit > of a purist when it comes to languages and I'm all in favour of linguistic > diversity, but IMHO having different decimal separators by country is stupid > and inefficient. I don't see how a Turk, an Italian or a Frenchman could > make fun of Brits and Americans because of inches, pints and ounces and, at > the same time, defend the comma instead of the dot. Upon re-reading my own message, I thought I'd better clarify to avoid flamefests: I'm not saying you, Talha, are stupid, no more than I'd call Allin stupid for saying "It's 20 miles from here" instead of "32 kilometers". Having different conventions for the decimal separators is stupid. That said, it may be worthwhile to adhere to a stupid convention in some cases (I myself use miles and pounds and pints when I'm in those barbaric lands). Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti Dipartimento di Economia Università Politecnica delle Marche r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it http://www.econ.univpm.it/lucchetti _______________________________________________ Gretl-users mailing list Gretl-users(a)lists.wfu.edu http://lists.wfu.edu/mailman/listinfo/gretl-users