Guidelines error?

Hi!
There is one thing that really stands out in the guidelines which is both weird and inconsistent, and that is the thousand separator.

A few years back discussions around concerning the use of a comma "," as a thousand separator, since many countries uses the comma as a divider for decimals. Then it was decided that a unbreakable space (" ") should be used instead. But, apparently this doesn't goes for all numbers abouve one thousand "1 000". This seems to apply only for numbers above ten thousand "10 000". This means, that according to the guidelines, the number 1 000-9 999 are not classified as numbers above thousand.

To me this is equal as saying "Decimals are to be separated with a dot '.', but only if there are more than two decimal number. This means that the number '35.75' are to be written '35 75'". It's insane, illogical and inconsistent. Could someone please explain to me why this has come to be? Why can't we write one thousand "1 000" with an unbreakable space as a thousand seperator? It is, after all, one thousand.

Tl;dr
We should change the guidelines to be consistent and write all numbers above 999 with a thousand seperator, as they are above thousand.

Thank you.

There are many style guides that enforce this (if I remember right, BIPM, IUPAC, IS, AMA). Others, like the Wiki style guide, have it as an optional. And yet others, recommend the use of the thousand dividers for numbers under 10 000 as well.

The Numista style guide is based on other style guides for texts in the field of history and archaeology, which I believe are the closest references we can get. The majority of these recommend the same style as Numista. The reason for this is that four-digit year numbers should not have a thousand divider (e.g. 2022, and not 2 022). However, year numbers written with five digits or more, should have a thousand divider (e.g. 10 000 BC).

Another reason, not specific to the field of history, is to avoid isolated single digits for numbers of only four digits. These numbers are short enough to be easily grasped at one glance and need no helping dividers.

Thank you or a very informative answer. This cave me much more clarity in the matter.

Although, in this specific case it's not about years/dates, but denominations, and as a title. I, personally, finds it more stylistic if all numbers from one thousand and up are treated the same. It's a lot of inconsistency in the catalogue already, and much is due to the guidelines changed from writing "1,000" to writing "1000" but "10,000" became "10 000". What was treated the same should now be treated differently.

Inconsistency is everywhere. Here's an example from the first catallgue I checked:


Cheers!

The consistency of the inconsistency in Numista seems to be the new rule.

Quote: "Sjoelund"​The consistency of the inconsistency in Numista seems to be the new rule.

​Yyyupp, it sure is.