Particularities in Writing and Language
½ is also one of the few fractions to get a key of its own on typewriters (see fractions). It also gets its own point in some early extensions of ASCII at 171; and in Unicode, it gets its own code point at U+00BD (decimal 189) in the C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement block, and a cross-reference in the Number Forms block, which contains some other fractions.
One half is as well one of the few fractions which is commonly expressed in natural languages by suppletion rather than regular derivation; compare English one half with regular formations like one sixth from six.
Read more about this topic: Halves
Famous quotes containing the words particularities in, writing and/or language:
“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.”
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