In Persian texts, the percent sign may either precede or follow the number, in either case without a space. In Arabic, the percent sign follows the number; as Arabic is written from right to left, this means that the percent sign is to the left of the number, usually without a space. In Hebrew, the percent sign is written to the right of the number, just as in English, without an intervening space. This is because numbers in Hebrew (which otherwise is written from right to left) are written from left to right, as in English. In Dutch, the official rule (NBN Z 01-002) is to place a space between the number and the sign (e.g. "een stijging van 50 %"), but most of the time, the space is missing (e.g. "een stijging van 50%"). Usage in text It is often recommended that the percent sign only be used in tables and other places with space restrictions. In running text, it should be spelled out as percent or per cent (often in newspapers). For example, not "Sales increased by 24% over 2006" but "Sales increased by 24 percent over 2006". Evolution Prior to 1425, there is no known evidence of a special symbol being used for percentage. The Italian term per cento, "for a hundred", was used as well as several different abbreviations (e.g. "per 100", "p 100", "p cento", etc.). Examples of this can be seen in the 1339 arithmetic text (author unknown) depicted below. The letter p with its descender crossed by a horizontal or diagonal strike (ꝑ in Unicode) conventionally stood for per, por, par, or pur in Medieval and Renaissance palaeography. At some point, a scribe used the abbreviation "pc" with a tiny loop or circle (depicting the ending -o used in Italian ordinals, as in , , etc.; it is analogous to the English "-th" as in "25th"). This appears in some additional pages of a 1425 text which were probably added around 1435. This is shown below (source, Rara Arithmetica p. 440). The "pc" with a loop eventually evolved into a horizontal fraction sign by 1650 (see below for an example in a 1684 text) and thereafter lost the "per". In 1925, D. E. Smith wrote, "The solidus form () is modern." Usage Encodings Unicode The Unicode code points are: (HTML &#37;, &percnt;), see fullwidth forms see Small Form Variants , which has the