Commercial minus sign

Last updated
⁒
Commercial minus sign
In  Unicode U+2052⁒COMMERCIAL MINUS SIGN
Different from
Different fromU+0025% PERCENT SIGN
U+00F7÷ DIVISION SIGN
U+066A٪ ARABIC PERCENT SIGN

The commercial minus sign is a typographical and mathematical symbol used in commercial and financial documents in some European languages, in specific contexts. [1]

Contents

In some commercial and financial documents, especially in Germany and Scandinavia, the symbol ÷ was used to indicate subtraction or to denote a negative quantity. [2] [a] The Unicode Consortium has allocated the code point U+2052 to identify this usage uniquely, [3] [5] the exact form of the symbol displayed is typeface (font) dependent. The symbol is also used in the margins of letters to indicate an enclosure, where the upper point is sometimes replaced with the corresponding number. [1]

The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses commercial minus signs to denote borrowed forms of a sound. [1]

In Finland, it can appear as a symbol for a correct response (the check mark indicates an incorrect response), but it is a cultural/typographic sign and it does not reflect any official practice in Finnish education system or in its education programs. There are no Finnish National Agency for Education (FNAE) official documents that contemplate the use of this symbol in exams. The assessment of mathematics in Finnish basic education is governed by the National Core Curriculum published by the Finnish National Agency for Education, which defines learning objectives and assessment principles without specifying typographic symbols for marking correct answers. [6] The U+2052 symbol is defined in Unicode as a Commercial Minus Sign, primarily used in commercial contexts and not in school mathematics. [7] [6] [7] [1] [5]

Typographic variant

In Germany, the form ./. was historically an alternative to the formal glyph, since this could be conveniently typed on a typewriter. It also provides a convenient alternative means for typing on a modern keyboard, without needing to resort to Unicode input.


See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The symbol : was used to denote division, as in 6:3=2. [3] Use of the symbol ÷ for division is specific to Anglophone countries. The ISO 80000-2 standard for mathematical notation recommends only the solidus / or "fraction bar" for division, or the "colon" : for ratios; it says that the ÷ sign "should not be used" for division. [4]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Writing Systems and Punctuation". The Unicode® Standard, Version 10.0 (PDF). Mountain View, CA: The Unicode Consortium. 2017. ISBN   978-1-936213-16-0.
  2. ↑ Johann Philipp Schellenberg (1825). Kaufmännische Arithmetik (in German). p. 213.
  3. 1 2 Leif Halvard Silli. "Too narrowly defined: DIVISION SIGN & COLON". Unicode.org.
  4. ↑ ISO 80000-2, Section 9 "Operations", 2-9.6
  5. 1 2 Leif Halvard Silli. "Commercial minus as italic variant of division sign in German and Scandinavian context". Unicode.org.
  6. 1 2 "National Core Curriculum for Basic Education". Finnish National Agency for Education. Finnish National Agency for Education. Retrieved 2026-01-22.
  7. 1 2 "Unicode Technical Report #28: Unicode 3.2 Normalization Properties". unicode.org. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 2026-01-22. The COMMERCIAL MINUS SIGN (U+2052) is a typographical symbol primarily associated with commercial or financial notation. Its occasional appearance in Finnish school contexts as a mark indicating a correct answer is a non-mathematical, cultural or typographic usage, not defined or prescribed by any educational curriculum or assessment standard.
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