An Open Letter to the Internet
Dear Internet:
We’ve had some good times. We’ve had some bad times. We’ve had some times where you decided to drop shock images on my monitor and dumped viruses into my hard drive. I love you for who you are, I really do.
But please. There’s this one little thing you do that irks me. And it’s not the pop-up ads anymore, I’ve got those taken care of.
It’s the dollar sign.
See, you haven’t learned yet that the dollar sign goes before the number. Here, let me show you:
The dollar sign goes BEFORE the number. Please, for the love of God, we all know “dollars” is said after the number, but don’t express your money like this:
…it’s supposed to be like this.
NOT after the number. And most certainly not this:
Hello, redundancy much?
Let’s just stick to the formula.
The dollar sign goes before the number.
The dollar sign goes BEFORE the number.
THE DOLLAR SIGN GOES BEFORE THE NUMBER!
Man, if you can’t express your money right, you shouldn’t be allowed to handle it. If you know of anyone who has the delusion that, for some reason, the dollar sign goes somewhere after the number, you may want to point them to these handy diagrams. It’s a serious disease and needs to be treated immediately. These are also the sorts of people that leave CAPS LOCK ON, and think you can type LOL when you’re not really laughing out loud, the liars.
Please. Save the brain cells of the smarter population. Put the dollar sign before the number.
December 15, 2008 at 9:16 pm
I disagree. We should either say dollars before the amount or change it to how it should be. I prefer the second one. Just because it has always been that way does not make it correct.
December 15, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Neither way is CORRECT, Cody. Like anything else in communication, it is possible to change. There is, however, an established way of doing things – we call this grammar. It’s necessary to follow the already-established rules of grammar to prevent the other parties from being pissed off. Writing 5$ provokes the same annoyed feeling that saying “I is good” does.
Besides, the dollar sign is something used very often, and we’re not going to suddenly change it. There’s an established way of writing currency. Stick to it. Typing 5$ just because it sounds that way is a sign of laziness, not social change. It’s done that way with most forms of currency, so stick to the mother fucking formula and stop being a lazy ass.
December 18, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Reminds me of the distinction among prefix, infix, and postfix notation.
Prefix–operator before the objects:
~A (not A)
Infix–operator between the objects:
3 + 5 (3 plus 5)
Postfix–operator after the objects:
5! (5 factorial)
You could say the dollar sign is a prefix notation, since it provides the number with a specific type (just like “int,” “double,” “long,” and the like in programming languages). And it would be logical to place such an operator before the object, because you better damn well know what kind of currency you’re talking about before going about reading the numbers. $1,000 and ¥1,000 are drastically different, and if I deal with money a lot, I’d like to know the “unit worth” before I do anything.
But then, it’s nothing more than a guess. As for why ¢ or Mi is a postfix notation…I’m not so sure. I suppose it’s a matter of convention, after all.
February 26, 2009 at 3:14 pm
mark. you are an idiot.
February 28, 2009 at 2:05 am
Yes I am. And who am I talking to, dare I ask?