Hello Martin
The answer to your question is obvious at a glance -- but thanks to the units, I can read and compared them at a glance -- all three at once. There is no co0nfusiong, of course, because everyone knows what KB, MB, GB and TB represent -- and if you are fighting to get the last 3 bytes on to a CD, then I have to say "Enjoy" but I have better things to do.
If you think writing out the bytes all the time will make things better, then I can only say you are different from the vast majority of people get confused with big numbers. Quite apart from the plethora of digits, which don't actually add anything to what they know and gets in the way of their processing the information, there are the differences in notation to add to the confusion.
You write: 159.637.686
I presume that is a whole number, i.e. no decimal places. If there were decimal places, I think you would add a comma to denote that all following numbers were decimals.
But looking at your number immediately confuses me because our way of writing such a number would be 159,637,686 and if there were decimal places we would add a "." to denote that.
Others are using spaces, so they would write 159 637 686. I'm not sure whether they then use a comma or a full point to indicate decimals. I find this way of writing large numbers very confusing -- is there supposed to be a space there or is it a typo?
By the way, do you do all your shopping and other financial transactions in cents only (or whatever is the smallest denomination in your currency)?
Cheers, Geoff
Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher
"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at
http://www.worsleypress.com
