Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime

11.4. MAKE NUMBERS EASY TO UNDERSTAND

Math is a universal language and numbers are numbers, right? Not quite, as this section points out. In international Web pages, we must take special care with how we present numbers, currency, dates, times, and telephone numbers.

11.4.1. SPE££ out ¥our ¢urr€ncy unit$

How much is one dollar worth? Silly question? If you say yes, I will gladly swap you Taiwan dollars for American dollars-one for one. (Each Taiwan dollar is worth about three US cents according to this morning's exchange rate.) Taiwan, the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand all have dollars as currency. Similarly, several countries have francs, pounds, and pesos.

Spell out currency units. For example, writing $123 is ambiguous. Instead, write US$123 or $123 USD. If you are referring to Canadian dollars, write $123 Canadian or $123 CAD.

11.4.2. Remember that decimal points are not always dots

One thousand two hundred thirty-four and fifty-six one hundredths is written 1234.56 in the US, but might be written as 1 234,56 in France, and 1.234,56 in Germany.

To avoid such decimal confusion:

• Make the country clear—this is especially important anywhere on the Web.

• Alert users when jumping from a page produced in one country to one produced in another.

• Clarify an ambiguous number. For example change 1,234 to 1,234.0

• Use a non-breaking space as a thousands separator. For example, 1 234 567.

NOTE

In HTML, you produce a non-breaking space with the code &n b s p; ...