Other Differences

Punctuation

Both the position and the type of punctuation symbols can vary between languages. In Spanish, "¿" and "¡" appear at the beginnings of sentences, while in Finnish colons ( : ) can occur inside words.

Symbols

Commonly used symbols in one culture often have no meaning in another culture. For example, because the common U.S. rural mailbox does not exist in other countries, it would not make a universal email icon.

Measurements

While most countries now use the metric system of measurement, the United States, parts of Canada, and the Great Britain (albeit unofficially) still use the imperial system. The symbols for feet (`) and inches (") are not understood in all countries.

Gender

The spelling of adjectives, articles, and nouns are gender-dependent in some languages. In French, for example, "un petit gamin" and "une petite gamine" both mean "a cute kid." The first expression, however, refers to a boy, and the second expression to a girl. Also, neuter objects in English ("a computer" for example) have gender in other languages ("un ordinateur" is a masculine noun in French).

Titles and Addresses

Mr., Miss, Mrs., and Ms. are common titles in the U.S. but are not used in many other countries. The order in which addresses are written is different too.

Address formats differ from country to country. In many countries, the postal code includes letters as well as numbers.

The order of writing addresses differs from country to country. The order of writing first name and last name is also different.

Paper Sizes

Within each country a small number of paper sizes are commonly used, normally with one of those sizes being much more common than the others. Most countries follow ISO Standard 216 "Writing paper and certain classes of printed matter--Trimmed sizes--A and B series."

Internationalized applications should not make assumptions about the page sizes available to them. The Solaris system provides no support for tracking output page size; this is the responsibility of the application program. Table 1-5 shows Common International Page Sizes.

Table 1-5 Common International Page Sizes

Paper Type	Dimensions	Countries
ISO A4	21.0 cm by 29.7 cm	Everywhere except U.S.
ISO A5	14.8 cm by 21.0 cm	Everywhere except U.S.
JIS B4	25.9 cm by 36.65 cm	Japan
JIS B5	18.36 cm by 25.9 cm	Japan
U.S. Letter	8.5 inch by 11 inches	U.S. and Canada
U.S. Legal	8.5 inch by 14 inches	U.S. and Canada