# A Little Dotty? * is an Artifact *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 22 Dec 1999* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Talarican *22 Dec 1999, 21:29* Dan, " Hmmm, I always assumed the plate read: M . Million Sometimes a dot is used to indicate multiplication. "Monsieur" is often abbreviated to "M." " You're right, of course. I would actually have preferred to more correctly use a "bullet" dot floating at mid-line height for this, but of course the email character set wouldn't support it, so far as I know. But that's how _I_ envisioned what Number Five sees. His hungover revelation comes when he realizes that the dot is not a period but a dot at half-height in the line of text. I tried to approximate it with an asterisk, which of course is also used as a multiplication sign, esp. in most programming languages. BTW I apologize to all for my mishap last couple of posts; I didn't realize my new email software defaulted to HTML. --- ### mark millman *23 Dec 1999, 09:47 · follows Talarican* > At 9:29 pm Wednesday 22 December 1999, "Talarican" > wrote: > Dan, > Hmmm, I always assumed the plate > read: M . Million >> Sometimes a dot is used to indicate >> multiplication. "Monsieur" is often >> abbreviated to "M." > You're right, of course. I would actually have > preferred to more correctly use a "bullet" dot > floating at mid-line height for this, but of course > the email character set wouldn't support it, so > far as I know. > > But that's how _I_ envisioned what Number > Five sees. His hungover revelation comes when > he realizes that the dot is not a period but a dot > at half-height in the line of text. > > I tried to approximate it with an asterisk, which > of course is also used as a multiplication sign, > esp. in most programming languages. I just got back from a business trip to England, where I saw people use a dot, not at half-height in the line, but at the bot- tom of the line (just like a punctuation period), to indicate mul- tiplication. Whether this is also customary in France, or among Francophone mathematicians, I can't say, but it seems possible. Mark Millman ---