Division sign
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The division sign (Template:Char) is a mathematical symbol consisting of a short horizontal line with a dot above and another dot below, used in Anglophone countries to indicate the operation of division. This usage is not universal and the symbol has different meanings in other countries. Consequently, its use to denote division is deprecated in the ISO 80000-2 standard for notations used in mathematics, science and technology.[1] In older textbooks, it is called an obelus, though that term is also used of other symbols.
In mathematics
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The obelus, a historical grapheme consisting of a horizontal line with (or without) one or more dots, was first used as a symbol for division in 1659, in the algebra book Script error: No such module "Lang". by Johann Rahn, although previous writers had used the same symbol for subtraction.[2] Some near-contemporaries believed that John Pell, who edited the book, may have been responsible for this use of the symbol.[2] Other symbols for division include the slash or solidus Template:Char, the colon Template:Char, and the fraction bar (the horizontal bar in a vertical fraction).[3][4] The ISO 80000-2 standard for mathematical notation in science and technology recommends only the solidus Template:Char or "fraction bar" for division, or the "colon" Template:Char for ratios; it says that the Template:Char sign "should not be used" for division.[1] Nevertheless, Template:Char continues to be used on scientific calculators.
In Italy, Poland and Russia, the same Template:Char sign was sometimes used to denote a range of values, and in Scandinavian countries it was, and sometimes still is, used as a negation sign:[5] the Unicode Consortium has allocated a separate code point, Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.U+2052 ⁒ Script error: No such module "Unicode data". for this usage uniquely;[6][7] the exact form of the symbol displayed is typeface (font) dependent.
In computer systems
Encoding
The symbol was assigned to code point 0xF7 in ISO 8859-1, as the "division sign". This encoding was transferred to Unicode as U+00F7.[8] In HTML, it can be encoded as ÷ or ÷ (at HTML level 3.2), or as ÷.
Unicode provides various division symbols:[9]
| Codepoint | Name | Symbol |
|---|---|---|
| U+00F7 | Division Sign | ÷ |
| U+27CC | Long Division | ⟌ |
| U+2215 | Division Slash | ∕ |
| U+2A38 | Circled Division Sign | ⨸ |
| U+2797 | Heavy Division Sign | ➗ |
| U+2298 | Circled Division Slash | ⊘ |
| U+22C7 | Division Times | ⋇ |
| U+29BC | Circled Anticlockwise-Rotated Division Sign | ⦼ |
Use
Most programming languages use only the 128 ASCII characters, and so do not use the ÷ character. However, the programming language APL uses ÷ for the unary reciprocal operator and the binary division operator.
See also
Notes
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- ^ a b BS ISO 80000-2, "Quantities and units Part 2: Mathematical signs and symbols to be used in the natural sciences and technology", Section 9 "Operations", 2-9.6
- ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Cajori, Florian (1928). A history of mathematical notations. Vol. 1. Notations in Elementary Mathematics. The Open Court Company. pp. 242, 270–271. pp 270,271
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Weisstein, Eric W. "Division". mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved 2020-08-26.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Division". www.mathsisfun.com. Retrieved 2020-08-26.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."6. Writing Systems and Punctuation" (PDF). The Unicode® Standard: Version 10.0 – Core Specification. Unicode Consortium. June 2017. p. 280, Obelus.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Leif Halvard Silli. "Too narrowly defined: DIVISION SIGN & COLON". Unicode.org.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Leif Halvard Silli. "Commercial minus as italic variant of division sign in German and Scandinavian context". Unicode.org.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Korpela, Jukka (2006), Unicode Explained: Internationalize documents, programs, and web sites, O'Reilly Media, Inc., p. 397, ISBN 9780596101213
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Division symbol".
