Comma or Period – Which Belongs in the Mortgage Calculator?
We had noticed more of our users getting errors on our Quicken Loans website calculators than we thought there should be. So we took a look. Apparently some people use a period when typing a number greater than or equal to one thousand in place of the comma.
Some people were typing: $200,000
Others were typing: $200.000
Truthfully, they mean two different things, but we’re not here to debate whether a comma or period is correct. We just want to know how to best adapt to our visitors and help them along through our site.
So here’s what we told our engineers:
If a visitor types a period or a comma with three trailing zeroes, go ahead and the punctuation and we’ll take the number as is.
But – if a visitor types a comma or decimal with two trailing zeroes, drop the punctuation and the zeroes and we’ll just use the resulting number.
Might sound complicated, but it really makes a lot of sense. This way, whether you use a comma or period to denote the thousands place or the cents on the dollar, either way, we get it. We understand and we’ll do our best to get you results for your calculations.
Just another way we listen to our users and make their visit to our website just a little more pleasant.
June 22nd, 2009 at 3:18 pm
The simplest solution woul be to instruct users to include both dollars AND cents when typing in their amounts and then have the calculator disregard all punctuation included in the entered amount as $5000000, or as five million dollars) and divide it by one hundred.
Example:
User enters: $565,000.78
Calculator views as: 56500078
Calculator divides by 100
Amount printed out on screen: $565000.78
This process process is best because it allows users to use whatever punctuatuion they want wherever they want while still giving them the most accurate calculations and therefore improving customer satisfaction.
As to what you said about some users typing $200,000 and others $200.000 a period and how a period and a comma mean two different things. Yes and no.
Yes because punctuation wise they are different. But when it comes to numbers, it depends on where you are in the world. For example in Italy, and other places in Europe, they use a comma instead of a period to separate Euros from Euro Cents (€20,00 instead of €20.00). In addition, they use a period instead of a comma for numbers greater than or equal to one thousand (writing €5.000 instead of €5,000).