Per mille

Per mille
Visualisation of 1%, 1, 1 and 1 ppm as the fraction of the red cube to its respective block (click for larger version)

A per mille[1][2][3] (from Latin per mīlle, "in each thousand"[4]), also spelled per mil,[1][2][4][5][6][7] per mill,[4][5][6][7][8][9] permil,[4] permill,[4] or permille[3] is a sign indicating parts per thousand. Per mil should not be confused with parts per million (ppm).

The sign is written , which looks like a percent sign (%) with an extra zero in the divisor. It is included in the General Punctuation block of Unicode characters: U+2030 PER MILLE SIGN (HTML ‰ · ‰).[3] It is accessible in Windows using ALT+0137.

The term occurs so rarely in English that major dictionaries do not agree on the spelling or pronunciation even within a single dialect of English[10] and some major dictionaries such as Macmillan[11] and Longman[12] do not even contain an entry. The term is more common in other European languages where it is used in contexts, such as blood alcohol content, that are usually expressed as a percentage in English-speaking countries.

Examples

A railroad distance and gradient sign in the Czech Republic. The 20‰ grade is equivalent to 2%.

Examples of common use include:

References

  1. 1 2 Cambridge Dictionary Online. "per mille". Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), 2014. Accessed 31 August 2012.
  2. 1 2 Oxford Dictionaries: The British & World Dictionary. "per mille" Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 Unicode. "General Punctuation". 2014. Accessed 5 Aug 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. "per mil, adv." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2005.
  5. 1 2 eReference. "per mil Archived 2014-08-12 at the Wayback Machine.". Houghton Mifflin. Accessed 31 Aug 2012.
  6. 1 2 Oxford Dictionaries: The American Dictionary. "per mill". Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
  7. 1 2 Collins English Dictionary. "per mill or per mil". 2014. Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
  8. MerriamWebster Online. per mill". Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
  9. Collins American English Dictionary. "per mill". 2014. Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
  10. See entries above
  11. Macmillan Dictionary. "No result". Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
  12. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. "No result". Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
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