A Little Dotty? * is an Artifact

mark millman · 23 Dec 1999, 09:47 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: mark millman <millman at us.ncipher.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) A Little Dotty? * is an Artifact
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1999 09:47:22
Message-ID: <urth-v0028-0656 at digest.urth.net>
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At 9:29 pm Wednesday 22 December 1999, "Talarican"=20
<chemmie at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Dan,
>> Hmmm, I always assumed the plate=20
>> read: M . Million
>>
>> Sometimes a dot is used to indicate=20
>> multiplication.  "Monsieur" is often=20
>> abbreviated to "M."
>
> You're right, of course. I would actually have=20
> preferred to more correctly use a "bullet" dot=20
> floating at mid-line height for this, but of course=20
> the email character set wouldn't support it, so=20
> far as I know.
>
> But that's how _I_ envisioned  what Number=20
> Five sees. His hungover revelation comes when=20
> he realizes that the dot is not a period but a dot=20
> at half-height in the line of text.
>
> I tried to approximate it with an asterisk, which=20
> of course is also used as a multiplication sign,=20
> 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

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