division sign

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{{further|Division (mathematics)#Notation}}

The obelus, a historical glyph consisting of a horizontal line with (or without) one or more dots, was first used as a symbol for division in 1659, in the algebra book {{lang|de|Teutsche Algebra}} by Johann Rahn, although previous writers had used the same symbol for subtraction.{{cite book |title=A history of mathematical notations |volume= 1. Notations in Elementary Mathematics |publisher=The Open Court Company |year=1928 |first=Florian |last=Cajori |author-link=Florian Cajori |pages=242, 270–271 |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.200372/page/n261/mode/2up }} [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.200372/page/n289/mode/2up pp 270,271] Some near-contemporaries believed that John Pell, who edited the book, may have been responsible for this use of the symbol. Other symbols for division include the slash or solidus {{char|/}}, the colon {{char|:}}, and the fraction bar (the horizontal bar in a vertical fraction).{{Cite web|last=Weisstein|first=Eric W.|title=Division|url=https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Division.html|access-date=2020-08-26|website=mathworld.wolfram.com|language=en}}{{Cite web|title=Division|url=https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/division.html|access-date=2020-08-26|website=www.mathsisfun.com}} The ISO 80000-2 standard for mathematical notation recommends only the solidus {{char|/}} or "fraction bar" for division, or the "colon" {{char|:}} for ratios; it says that the {{char|÷}} sign "should not be used" for division.ISO 80000-2, Section 9 "Operations", 2-9.6

In Italy, Poland and Russia, the {{char|÷}} sign was sometimes used to denote a range of values, and in Scandinavian countries it was, and sometimes still is, used as a negation sign:{{cite book |chapter-url=https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/ch06.pdf#G7935 | page=280, Obelus | chapter = 6. Writing Systems and Punctuation | publisher= Unicode Consortium | title = The Unicode® Standard: Version 10.0 – Core Specification | date= June 2017}} the Unicode Consortium has allocated a separate code point, {{unichar|2052|commercial minus sign|nlink=}} for this usage uniquely;{{cite web |title=Too narrowly defined: DIVISION SIGN & COLON |url=http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2012-m07/0053.html | author = Leif Halvard Silli | website= Unicode.org}}{{cite web |url=https://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2014-m01/0018.html | title= Commercial minus as italic variant of division sign in German and Scandinavian context | author = Leif Halvard Silli | website= Unicode.org}} the exact form of the symbol displayed is typeface (font) dependent.

The symbol was assigned to code point 0xF7 in ISO 8859-1, as the "division sign". This encoding was transferred to Unicode as U+00F7.{{citation|title=Unicode Explained: Internationalize documents, programs, and web sites |first=Jukka |last=Korpela |publisher=O'Reilly Media, Inc. |year=2006 |isbn=9780596101213 |page=397 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PcWU2yxc8WkC&pg=PA397}} In HTML, it can be encoded as {{code|÷}} or {{code|÷}} (at HTML level 3.2), or as {{code|÷}}.

Unicode provides various division symbols:{{Cite web |title=Division symbol |url=https://divisionsymbol.net}}

• Plus and minus signs
• Multiplication sign

{{reflist}}

• [http://jeff560.tripod.com/operation.html Jeff Miller: Earliest Uses of Various Mathematical Symbols]
• [http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/signs.htm Michael Quinion: Where our arithmetic symbols come from]

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Category:Mathematical symbols

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Category:Division (mathematics)

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