Commercial minus sign

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

"⁒" redirects here. Not to be confused with ٪ or %.
⁒
Commercial minus sign
In UnicodeU+2052 ⁒ COMMERCIAL MINUS SIGN
Different from
Different fromU+0025 % PERCENT SIGN
U+00F7 ÷ DIVISION SIGN
U+066A ٪ ARABIC PERCENT SIGN

In some commercial and financial documents, especially in Germany and Scandinavia, the commercial minus sign is used to signify a negative remainder of a division operation.[1][2] 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.[3]

The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses commercial minus signs to denote borrowed forms of a sound.[3]

In Finland, it is used as a symbol for a correct response (the check mark indicates an incorrect response).[2]

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.

In Japan, the triangle (either △ or ▲) is used as the commercial minus sign.[4]

See also

References
  1. Johann Philipp Schellenberg (1825). Kaufmännische Arithmetik (in German). p. 213.
  2. Leif Halvard Silli. "Commercial minus as italic variant of division sign in German and Scandinavian context". Unicode.org.
  3. "Writing Systems and Punctuation". The Unicode® Standard, Version 10.0 (PDF). Mountain View, CA: The Unicode Consortium. 2017. ISBN 978-1-936213-16-0.
  4. 句読点、記号・符号活用辞典。 (in Japanese). 小学館辞典編集部. 2007. pp. 183, 185. ISBN 978-4095041766.
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