If your application is already localized to one western European language, it is easy to extend the localization to other languages in this category. Western European languages all read from left to right and use single-byte character sets and Latin script; however, they do not format date and time information the same way. In addition, Europe uses a 24-hour clock and the United States uses a 12-hour clock with A.M. and P.M. attributes. The currency (other than the Euro), placement of the currency symbol, and units of measure also vary within this group.
The following table lists the local conventions that are shared and those that are different among western European languages.
| Convention | Description of shared convention | Not shared |
|---|---|---|
| Calendar | Gregorian | |
| Character set | ISO-8859-1 | |
| Character set type | Single-byte | |
| Currency | X | |
| Date format | X | |
| Default paper size | X | |
| Direction of text | Left-to-right | |
| Language | X | |
| Layout of user interface | X | |
| Numeral format | X | |
| Time format | X | |
| Written script | Latin |
Note Although western European languages share many conventions, their grammars are very different. It is never a good idea to use concatenated strings because this often results in incorrectly localized message and user interface text.