not applicable character

[Brian]

I'm marking up a wine list. Some wines are sold by the glass and by
the bottle, others only by the bottle. On the printed menu, there is a
long dash in the "price by the glass" column to indicate that there is
no applicable entry. Any thoughts on what I should use? m-dash?

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Thor Kottelin]

Re: not applicable character



Brian wrote:
[color=blue]
> On the printed menu, there is a
> long dash in the "price by the glass" column to indicate that there is
> no applicable entry. Any thoughts on what I should use? m-dash?[/color]

If there is no applicable entry, do you really need one at all?

Thor

--

http://thorweb.anta.net/

[Jonathan Snook]

Re: not applicable character

"Thor Kottelin" <thor@anta.ne t> wrote in message
news:3F85DDB6.E DC05511@anta.ne t...[color=blue]
> Brian wrote:[color=green]
> > On the printed menu, there is a
> > long dash in the "price by the glass" column to indicate that there is
> > no applicable entry. Any thoughts on what I should use? m-dash?[/color]
>
> If there is no applicable entry, do you really need one at all?[/color]

It's a good indicator that the entry should not exist as opposed to
wondering if it was mistakenly left off. Much like in documentation where it
says, "This page intentionally left blank."

As to the OP's original question, I'm certainly not sure on the "definite"
answer. I'd probably just use an ndash or mdash.

Jonathan


--

http://www.snook.ca/

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: not applicable character

"Jonathan Snook" <goto_www.snook .ca@snook.ca> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>> > On the printed menu, there is a
>> > long dash in the "price by the glass" column to indicate that
>> > there is no applicable entry. Any thoughts on what I should
>> > use? m-dash?[/color]
>>
>> If there is no applicable entry, do you really need one at all?[/color]
>
> It's a good indicator that the entry should not exist as opposed to
> wondering if it was mistakenly left off. Much like in documentation
> where it says, "This page intentionally left blank."[/color]

Indeed, and in HTML documents, there are additional reasons too.
Empty cells cause technical problems in rendering, and they might be
confusing in speech rendering. More on empty cells and their problems:

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/emptycells.html

[color=blue]
> As to the OP's original question, I'm certainly not sure on the
> "definite" answer. I'd probably just use an ndash or mdash.[/color]

In a wine list in English, <i>N/A</i> would probably be the clearest
way, perhaps with a footnote that explains the notation.

I would not use any dash or hyphen, because there is a widespread
convention in statistical tables that a hyphen indicates an exact value
of zero. (It's more zero that 0 or 0.0, which indicate just a value
that is zero when rounded to the precision used.) Those conventions
typically use "." to indicate 'not applicable' (and ".." or "..." to
indicate 'data not available'). See e.g.

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mbs/symbols.asp

But if you use a dash-like character, I would suggest the em dash,
since it deviates more from a hyphen, thereby reducing the risk of
confusion.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Eric Bohlman]

Re: not applicable character

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> wrote in
news:Xns94106B3 D84089jkorpelac stutfi@193.229. 0.31:
[color=blue]
> I would not use any dash or hyphen, because there is a widespread
> convention in statistical tables that a hyphen indicates an exact value
> of zero. (It's more zero that 0 or 0.0, which indicate just a value
> that is zero when rounded to the precision used.) Those conventions[/color]

I assume you mean a "structural zero," as in "number of male subjects who
became pregnant."

[Andreas Prilop]

Re: not applicable character

Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@earth link.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
> I assume you mean a "structural zero," as in "number of male subjects who
> became pregnant."[/color]

Arnold?

[Brian]

Re: not applicable character

Andreas Prilop wrote:[color=blue]
> Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@earth link.net> wrote:
>[color=green]
>>I assume you mean a "structural zero," as in "number of male subjects who
>>became pregnant."[/color]
>
> Arnold?[/color]

rotfl.
Every once in a while, I get the urge to collect funny posts in the
usenet groups I frequent -- the funny ones are always in the computer
gropus -- and post them on my personal site. This would definitely be
collected. :-D

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: not applicable character

Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@earth link.net> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
>> I would not use any dash or hyphen, because there is a widespread
>> convention in statistical tables that a hyphen indicates an exact
>> value of zero. (It's more zero that 0 or 0.0, which indicate just
>> a value that is zero when rounded to the precision used.) Those
>> conventions[/color]
>
> I assume you mean a "structural zero," as in "number of male
> subjects who became pregnant."[/color]

I think that would be rather be "." 'not applicable', whereas
"-" might indicate the total number of pregrancies in a hi-tech company
where people are just too busy to reproduce. It's a bit debatable, of
course, whether male pregnancy is logically impossible (hence N/A) or
just currently a low frequency (exact zero, to be exact) phenomenon.

ObHTML: In principle, you could use
<abbr title="Not Applicable">N/A</abbr>
or
<span title="Not applicable">.</span>
to explain the notations. But in practice, that will hardly help - the
notations should be explained explicitly, unless the audience can be
expected to be familiar with them.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html