Global Faux Pas

Your letter illust rates the difficulties software developers face in addressing a global market. To summarize--and correct our table: For France, Germany, and Greece, the decimal separator is a comma (i.e., 123,45, not 123.45). Either a period or a space is sometimes used as the thousands separator (i.e., 1.234,56 or 1 234,56). Leading zeros in date and time formats (shown for hours and months in the table) are, in fact, rarely used. The minus symbol for negative amounts precedes the number, not the currency symbol. In Greece, a minus symbol rather than parentheses is used to indicate a negative amount, whereas in France, parentheses are often used. To further complicate matters, some rules are less stringently followed than others. Germans, for example, usually put the currency symbol before, but sometimes after, the amount. Developers are wise to allow for user choice in format details.-- Udo Flohr, contributing editor