Why not % ?

December 16, 2011 8:56 AM

Why spell out 'percent' or use 'pc' instead of the % symbol?

Is using 'pc' instead of % an example of UK vs. US English? Or is this a requirement of some style guide? Help me understand why one would choose typing 2 or 7 characters when just one will do. Or maybe the '%' symbol isn't universal? Please advise.

posted by Rash to Writing & Language (16 answers total)

I worked as a copy editor for my school paper for a while, and AP Style -- which we tried to adhere to -- dictates "percent" instead of "%", which is why you frequently see it in newsprint. I think it has something to do with old technical constraints, like you couldn't send the "%" symbol over wire, so they resorted to "percent" which has now become the standard there.
posted by andrewesque at 8:58 AM on December 16, 2011

I haven't seen "pc" on this side of the pond (i.e., the U.S.), but percent vs % is, in my experience as an editor, very much a style thing. I suspect that some combination of "that's how we've always done it" and "it's our house style" is the reason for "pc" in the UK.
posted by rtha at 8:59 AM on December 16, 2011

Yep, I was also going to add that "pc" seems to be a UK thing, since (as a US reader) I very rarely if ever see "pc" used instead of "%" or "percent."
posted by andrewesque at 9:00 AM on December 16, 2011

Who uses pc instead of percent of %? I've never seen that.
posted by missmagenta at 9:09 AM on December 16, 2011

Here's an article at random from today's Telegraph. It's just UK vs. US style.
posted by 2bucksplus at 9:14 AM on December 16, 2011

I'm in the US, and I've never noticed anyone using "pc" until I saw this thread.
posted by John Cohen at 9:17 AM on December 16, 2011

(also in much of the non-US and Canada English-speaking world percent is two words 'per cent' so pc is an abbreviation of the two-word phrase.)
posted by 2bucksplus at 9:22 AM on December 16, 2011

The abbreviation in the US would be "pct" rather than "pc".
posted by alms at 9:23 AM on December 16, 2011

FT house style is "per cent" in headlines and copy, and % in tables; like andrewesque, I'm inclined to think that it was a technical constraint now preserved in the stylebook.
posted by holgate at 9:28 AM on December 16, 2011

The AP Stylebook requires use of the spelled-out word rather than the symbol, which is pretty consistent with other things like degrees and ratios. It's in the 'numerals' category if you have one or a login for the online edition.
posted by phearlez at 9:38 AM on December 16, 2011

Personally, it's faster for me to type out the word than have to look down at the keyboard to figure out which number I'm supposed to press to get the symbol.
posted by coupdefoudre at 9:43 AM on December 16, 2011

Just chiming in to agree that spelling out "percent" is probably a holdover from the days when news stories had to be transmitted via teletype. I used to operate a teletype (Telex) machine in the 1970s and 1980s, and I recall that certain symbols could be transmitted domestically ($, for example) but would result in gibberish if included in an international message. And in some cases there was simply so such symbol on the keyboard, the % key being one of those.
posted by Oriole Adams at 9:58 AM on December 16, 2011

I've never seen "pc" used until this thread (I am in Canada). However, I suspect its use is similar to the use of "percent" or "per cent" in place of the "%" symbol: it's purely a style thing.

Many style guides suggest spelling out the word. Others suggest the opposite.
posted by asnider at 10:27 AM on December 16, 2011

The teletype theory explains why newspaper style guides would suggest "percent" rather than the symbol, but it doesn't explain why a book publisher's style guide (the Chicago Manual of Style, forex) does the same.
posted by notyou at 10:29 AM on December 16, 2011

Just as an addition to the AP Style answers, AP Style is generally all about saving space, reducing the number of characters used so a story can fit into fewer lines of type.

If it still insists on using a seven-character word over a single symbol, then its creators must have had a damned good reason for it.

FWIW, GPO also calls for the word, with an exception for tables where space doesn't allow for the word to be spelled out.
posted by Naberius at 10:46 AM on December 16, 2011

What sort of typesetting software is used by newspapers, etc? In LaTeX, "%" comments something out. Of course, one could say "\%", but this creates potential confusion for the person doing the typesetting, maybe the explanation goes. I think institutional habits being old and dying hard is much more plausible.

Also, having a symbol for "per cent" and not "per annum", "per diem" etc. is sort of inconsistent.
posted by kengraham at 2:43 PM on December 16, 2011