I thought it was a commonplace to know it harks to the kind of ink that was once used to keep ledgers. If the ledgers showed a debt or a loss, red ink was used. If they showed a credit or a gain, black ink was used. I don’t know what ink was used to show exactly zero. Now parentheses are commonly used in ledgers to indicate negative amounts. “No parentheses Friday” anybody?
“No parentheses Friday” anybody?”
LOL, but you know.....they’ll just say it’s racist anyway. Remember Mitt Romney’s “binders”?
I’m a bookkeeper and I actually pre-date computers but we never actually used different colored inks, but of course machines did and do.
The parentheses are much better than just putting the little dash in front of a negative number, you don’t really see that clearly at all.
Now, we could call it “no dash” Friday except that wouldn’t make ANY sense at all.
And yes, Joy and her ilk of the terminally stupid would say that was racist too!