Decimal separator
symbol used to separate the integer part from the fractional part in the positional notation of a decimal number
A decimal separator is a symbol that separates the integer part from the fractional part of a number written in decimal form. Different countries officially designate different symbols for use as the separator. The choice of symbol can also affect the choice of symbol for the thousands separator used in digit grouping.
Any such symbol can be called a decimal mark, decimal marker, or decimal sign. Symbol-specific names are also used; decimal point and decimal comma refer to a dot (either at the baseline or the vertically middle of the written characters) and comma, respectively, when it is used as a decimal separator; these are the usual terms used in English, with the aforementioned generic terms reserved for abstract usage.
In many contexts, when a number is spoken, the function of the separator is assumed by the spoken name of the symbol: comma or point in most cases. In some specialized contexts, the word decimal is instead used for this purpose (such as in International Civil Aviation Organization-regulated air traffic control communications). In mathematics, the decimal separator is a type of radix point, a term that also applies to number systems with bases other than ten.
Current international standards
The 22nd General Conference on Weights and Measures declared in 2003, "The symbol for the decimal marker shall be either the point on the line or the comma on the line." It further reaffirmed,
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
That is, "1 000 000 000" is preferred over "1,000,000,000" or "1.000.000.000". This use has therefore been recommended by technical organizations, such as the United States's National Institute of Standards and Technology.
“Decimal separator” enters the record as symbol used to separate the integer part from the fractional part in the positional notation of a decimal number. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Decimal, separator and symbol can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Decimal separator” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.