Percentages

Subject: Percentages
From: geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 12:28:04 -0500

Diane Williams wondered whether to use the % symbol or
spell out "percent" in a report to Congress. Diane, you
made the distinction between scientific and humanistic in
your question, which leads me to suspect you're asking your
question based on a house style guide that makes this
distinction. That being the case, perhaps you should look
for any previous reports in the series to determine how
they handled this nonproblem.

Nonproblem? Well, to me the distinction between scientific
and humanistic is artificial in this context (and in most
others, for that matter). I've never met anyone who didn't
understand what % meant, and whatever we may think about
the folks in Congress, I suspect they'll understand it just
fine. My general practice (specifically, scientific
editing) is use the symbol, not the words, to refer to
numbers. If you need more justification than that, you
could always fall back on the cliche that scientists deals
in numbers whereas researchers in the humanities can't
count. <gdr>

--Geoff Hart @8^{)} geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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