Page "Percentage" Paragraph 44

In the early part of the twentieth century, there was a dotted abbreviation form “ per cent .”, as opposed to “ per cent ”.

The form “ per cent .” is still in use as a part of the highly formal language found in certain documents like commercial loan agreements ( particularly those subject to, or inspired by, common law ), as well as in the Hansard transcripts of British Parliamentary proceedings.

While the term has been attributed to Latin per centum, this is a pseudo-Latin construction and the term was likely originally adopted from the French pour cent.

The concept of considering values as parts of a hundred is originally Greek.

The symbol for percent (%) evolved from a symbol abbreviating the Italian per cento.

In some other languages, the form prosent is used instead.

Some languages use both a word derived from percent and an expression in that language meaning the same thing, e. g. Romanian procent and la sută ( thus, 10 % can be read or sometimes written ten for hundred, similarly with the English one out of ten ).

Other abbreviations are rarer, but sometimes seen.