this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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What's the 9/10 after the price?
9/10 of a cent
New unit unlocked. The decicent.
Also known as mill
Shush, you, with your reasonable and well-sourced criticism of the decicent.
It's right there, glorious!
So the price of unleaded is 2.74 + 9/10 of a cent?
Isnt that just 2.749? Why show it as a fraction?
Sorry, I'm really confused.
Edit: Oh, is this to accommodate other fractions like 3/4 or 7/9?
Not sure why they show it like that, it might be a design choice. Where I live, it's often put as decimals, with the last digit smaller than the others:
Ah yes, the "round to 9" method. That one is a worldwide plague.
I've seen displays with the lower sized digits, but usually it's the cents: β¬149^.99^
Adding fractions of a cent to a price display is just so... avaricious. (I'm sure there's a more common word for this but I could find it)
That looks like 179^9^ or 35263
The actual reason: Gasoline prices in the United States were customarily displayed in cents per US gallon (about 3.8 litres). This means the sign originally read something like "15", which meant $0.15 per gallon. Since the US has also a long history of pricing things in 9 or 99 (due to the psychological effect of such pricing), many service stations appended the extra 9/10 at the end to indicate 9/10 of 1 cent, which was a more meaningful price difference when the price of fuel was 15 or 25 cents and not two or three dollars. Legally, although the smallest cash denomination in the US is one cent, the US dollar can still be nominally divided into 1,000 "mills" for accounting purposes.
Inflation has caused the price of gasoline to rise, and when it passed $1 per gallon, service stations continued the same pricing traditions by just adding a third digit to the number. When digital price displays came on the scene, many of them continued to just display a three-digit number with the traditional 9/10 at the end, i.e. 123 9/10
New displays seem to have gotten rid of this tradition and just display a three-digit decimal number, i.e. 3.45 or 4.56.
Huh interesting. Thank you for the insight.
You understand perfectly. Itβs fucking stupid. No, the fraction never changes. Itβs just a culturally and legally accepted price scam, one of many that only exist in the land of freedom. The price listed is literally never the price you pay in the USA.
The 9/10 of a cent isn't unique to the US. But not having the tax included is kind of weird.
Edit: tax not TeX lol
It's a marketing thing. The price looks like $2.74, but in reality, for all intents and purposes, it's $2.75. And in some areas with heavy competition, one or two cents actually does matter. The consumer will go to the place with the $2.74 sign even though the price is (essentially) the same.
Why not just 2.749?
Because it would be the rational thing to do.
Yeah it's dumb. American thing only I think
9/10ths of a cent. It's part of the tax.
It has nothing to do with tax. Itβs just to make the price look one smaller. May I ask where you were taught it had anything to do with tax?
Tax is included in gas price
Here is the federal Energy Information Administration's website stating the federal tax on gasoline is 18.3 cents per gallon. On top of that, states will add taxes on top. My state of North Carolina currently has a 40.65 cent per gallon tax on gasoline. Which works out to be 58.95 cents per gallon in tax.
art of the tax