presumably the degree symbol ? has been misread as ‘0’ – though how to insert it here is a mystery to me (maybe it sits alongside with the pound symbol as forbidden?

Edited By Frances IoM on 15/06/2018 17:43:48

Hi Frances,

The website is in Unicode. How you enter Unicode characters into the editor depends on your operating system. Ubuntu makes it easy: I just type ctrl-SHIFT u followed by the unicode number in hexadecimal. Space or enter terminates the hex. Windows makes it harder to do, though I have an idea there's an improvement in Windows 10.

For example:

00B5 = µ
00BC = ¼
00BD = ½
00BE = ¾
00B0 = °
00B1 = ±
03A9 = Ω
03BB = λ
03C0 = π
2103 = ℃
2109 = ℉
00F8 = ø
2116 = №

Or you could cut and paste characters from this post.

Finding the hex code is easy if you know the name of the character; just search for 'unicode ohm'. Otherwise here's a gigantic table. It's broken down by language if that helps. Usually tells you what the character is after you've found it – for example ʬ is the latin bilabial percussive. Bet that comes in useful one day. Not!

Dave

£££££££?

I would like to suggest that actually stating degrees C (or degrees F) is rather clearer, ie more easily understood, than using a tiny superscript circle followed by C (or F).

Feel sorry for us astronomy types. In one direction here are 15 times as many minutes and seconds as there are in the other!

An alternative could be to use a specific mathematical typeface (font in computerese). This involves the normal 'roman' alphabet but for all the other characters mathematical symbols are substituted. Then, as long as the printer has the same font, such problems should annoy the editor, the proof reader, and the paying customer, much less.

The whole problem of using such symbols is one which computer and font designers seem to have been very slow to make available to us ordinary folk.

And I suggest in the meantime that clear instructions are offered to all contributors, setting out ways in which such problems might be avoided. Such as using words instead of symbols.

Regards, Tim

It would help if authors used a degree symbol

It's not the shortcomings of the software, it's essential to rip out any 'hidden' formatting as part of the production process – double/multiple spaces, exotic line spacings and of course we use house fonts etc.

Many articles do things like combine tabs, paragraph indents and spaces to achieve a particular look and all these have to be taken out.

In this case I forgot to swap out the zeroes for degree symbols and didn't notice on the proof. I can't blame authors, but it helps everyone if they can use a proper degree symbol as this is less error prone.

doc, docx, rtf, odt – all fine, all prone to the same issues. The formats not to use are pub and pdf.

Neil

10 percent

10 to the power 2

10deg F or C

What am I missing in using this method?

Geoff – Air piping done with one leak soon fixed.

If I have need for a special symbol then I'd pull up Character Map in windoze and pick it off in the font being used except for complex formulae best embedded as images. However a standard keyboard usually supplies enough obvious options for common stuff: 10%, 10^2 or 10'F. Indeed 10^2 is probably easier read with older eyes than 10²

pgk

Sorry Neil, if your software converts something that was right into something that is wrong, it has a shortcoming. It might be difficult to avoid, but it is still there.

As for writing 10 to the power 2, that would get really unwieldy in an equation of any length, and would be ambiguous, would 10 to the power 2 divided by 5 be

10^2/5 or 10²/5

mathematical notation was developed for a good reason.

10²/5 = 20

10^2/5=2.5118864

I've got a book that raises to the power 1/2 in formula rather than use square root signs, as in 16^1/2=4

I guess it was done that way to avoid using a special maths font. Can anyone think of a mathematical reason for that fractional notation?

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 16/06/2018 17:58:53

BODMAS (or BIDMAS) is the mathematicians rule.