From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Aug 14 2003 - 18:34:41 EDT
> > After all the euro is a common currency and its figures should be
> > written in a common way.
>
> Why?
Why, too? This is absolutely not required by the european directives,
which has already stated different names for the subdivision for each
language, and accepted distinct plural forms, as well as using the
national
conventions which were already in use to designate amounts in local
currency (now the euro) and foreign currencies (like the USD). As
local conventions for foreign currencies were not affected by the Euro,
they are still valid, and did not have to change.
> > > In fact, the position of the currency unit and decimal separator
or
> > > placement of the negative sign depends mostly of the current
locale
> > > (language/region) and not on the indicated currency, so this
> > > convention is applied locally for *all* currency units.
> >
> > Nope, this is not true:
>
> In most cases, it is: amounts in foreign currency are normally
formatted
> according to local conventions. E.g. a price in US$ on an Italian
magazine
> would probably be formatted as "$2.345,50", not "$2,345.50" or
"2,345$50¢".
And in France, "2 345,50$" (we already use the term "virgule" in ALL
numeric
designations, and I don't see why we should write it with a dot for
amounts
in euros...)
> > > Using the cent sign is mostly US specific and the symbol is not
> > > recognized as such in most European countries, so the cent sign is
> > > bound directly to the dollar.
> >
> > [...] then I suppose there is a
> > theoreitical possiblity that it may be used as a symbol of euro cent
> > (though I personally prefer "cEUR").
>
> The problem is not *which* symbol to use for cent: it is the concept
itself
> that cents may need a symbol which is not familiar in most EU
countries.
>
> I guess that Ireland is the only euro-zone country where you can see a
price
> expressed in cents, such as "55 cents". In most other countries of
Europe,
> the same amount would be expressed as "0.55 euros".
In France we use the translation "centime" for amounts in cents, notably
in
many phone rates (soon we will need to use "millimes" for local phone
rates
if prices are continuing to go lower, as they are now typically at
0,02€/min,
almost always announced like "2 centimes par minute" with some operators
pricing at 0,01€/min, and our phone billings, calculated per second
instead
of minutes are already using detailed prices in thousands of euros.)
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