Re: Rendering Raised FULL STOP between Digits

On Sat, 09 Mar 2013 14:41:11 -0800
Asmus Freytag <asmusf_at_ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> On 3/9/2013 1:51 PM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> > 2013-03-09 21:30, Asmus Freytag wrote:

> > I wonder what character and techniques British publishers use to
> > produce notations with a raised dot. Is it 002E, with typographic
> > tools used to raise it, or is it 00B7?

> I agree, data would help settle this. Richard?

I'm not in the publishing business, but here's what I know.

The general feeling seems to be that computers don't do proper decimal
points, and so the raised decimal point is dropping out of use. In
so far as character coding is involved, the raised decimal point seems
to be produced using U+00B7, and I was taken aback by the statement
that that was not the correct character.

'The Lancet' reportedly insists on the use of the raised decimal point
(http://www.download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/authors/artwork-guidelines.pdf)
and gives the instructions 'Type decimal points midline (ie, 23·4, not
23.4). To create a midline decimal on a PC: hold down ALT key and type
0183 on the number pad, or on a Mac: ALT shift 9.' On Windows, that
gives U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT.

I've googled for advice on how to produce the raised decimal point.
Apart from suggestions to use the a character picker (generally implying
U+00B9), the only other method I've seen is a TeX package called
'decimal'. It appears to render '.' as the (raised) decimal point and
'\.' as the full stop. That's the closest I've found to raising a full
stop.

Back in May 1999, John Cowan said on this list 'That is the British
decimal-point convention. It can be represented in Unicode plain text
with U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT', and no one contradicted him in the thread.

Richard.
Received on Sat Mar 09 2013 - 19:33:08 CST