It's $100 and not 100$.
Sorry to be anal about this, but I see this error frequently.
Perhaps, pedantic, but yes, relevant thread.....and yes, I agree with you. My teeth grind too, when I see such errors......
Agreed, it really makes people look like complete dumbasses IMO.
How can you live X years, see prices listed hundreds of thousands of times, and still **** that up? Bugs me to no end.
Yes. Amazing. Sigh. I had students (university students) who could not differentiate between 'there' and 'their' and 'they're'......among many other (basic) horrors.
I blame the French.
Well, because I always do.
The French are always well worth blaming (but less so now, since Mr Sarkozy lost office; perhaps I'm prejudiced....)
I feel like you're fretting over trivia.
Not really. Written forms tend to be a bit more formal than spoken forms and, as such, an agreed (and accurate) form of communication is welcome. I don't see sloppiness in written communication - especially in a formal context - as mere trivia.
To be fair, if all of English was written the same way that it was spoken then it'd look completely different.
Something like: to be fare, if all ov inglish was ritten the same way that it was spouken then ittid look kompletelee different.
Obviously I'm going a little (OK, a lot) overboard there but you get my point
Ah, yes. Around four hundred years ago, the written language (of English) approximated pretty closely to the spoken language as it then was. However, over the next two hundred years (caused by what is termed 'the great vowel shift' among other things) - the
spoken language changed - or evolved - and the written language remained as it was. Hence, we now have a situation where the language as written sometimes does not reflect how it is pronounced........
Where is the logic in putting the dollar sign before the number? Does one say "I owe him dollar five hundred"?
Now OP, please stop acting as if the United States of America were the only country in the world, or as if their standards were also de-facto standards for the rest of the world.
I was taught to write numbers in the following way: 1 000 000,00$, and will continue to do so even though it hurts some people's feelings. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's wrong.
The way currency denominations are written probably long pre-exists the foundation of the US. Indeed, I rather imagine that standard double entry book-keeping practices conformed to this ideal long before the Pilgrim Fathers set sail; while it might be the standard for the US, it was a standard which predated same.....
Agreed, it is very annoying.
Yes, it is. Agreed.
Even before I read the rest of the thread, I know this is going to be good one. Travel internationally much?
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Yep. I was right. The 'furriners' pointing out that there is world outside the USA, and then xenocentric "But this is an American website" and then the 'furriners' pointing out another global reality, and then the clarification that the OP just really meant to rant about the American Craigslist and forgot about, well, everybody else.
I've seen better, but this met expectations.
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I'll give this one a 6.5 out of 11 - in honour of 'eleventy cents'.... that is if 'honour' doesn't set off another rant.
Oh, as threads go, I like this sort of stuff. Personally, I have to say I find it a lot less trying than some others.......
And people think I'm cranky!!!
You should try me on a bad.....anal retentive, pedantic, and exceedingly precise day.....cranky does not begin to describe it.....
well if they had '&' it would make sense, so i would give it a pass, but with the '.' it doesn't make any sense.
however, i have never ever seen it as well so i suppose it's not that common.
as far as the original point, it certainly makes more sense to put the sign after.
Like with so many other notations derived from the imperial/british system (date, units, temperature, shoe size, etc.) we stuck to the vastly inferior ones out of laziness and a misplaced sense of superiority/exceptionalism.
in any case, this thread gets my vote for "inane thread of the year"
Two points. I don't see this as the 'inane thread of the year'. I'm a nerd, so I like this stuff. And I have to say I sometimes find the emotional stuff ('my girlfriend doesn't love me any more....') much more inane. But there you are. That is mere personal preference and psychological make-up.
Secondly, in speech, yes, of course, placing the currency after the sum makes total sense, as your interlocutor often already knows what you are talking about. However, the written form is different. There, it makes sense to clarify what you are talking about as early as possible - thus, knowing the currency of which you write, in advance of the sum cited, makes much more sense when written, and, as such has become an agreed convention, especially when one discusses transnational transactions.
