The screenshot of this article contains an interest rate input field. The prompt in that field says "enter the interest rate, i.e. 3.25." The use of 'i.e.' (

The screenshot of this article contains an interest rate input field. The prompt in that field says "enter the interest rate, i.e. 3.25." The use of 'i.e.' (Latin id est, meaning 'that is') is a common error in such prompts. I think they meant 'e.g.' (exampli gratia) meaning 'for example.' That aside, the presence of the decimal point raises four somewhat problematic questions: (1) how many decimal places are you going to allow on input? (2) how many decimal places will you display back to the user after they enter more decimal places than the typical user is expected to enter? (3) how many decimal places of the input will the application actually use in such cases? (4) How wide do you make the field to display the interest rate, and what do you do if the user enters something that won't fit there? If you are writing software that should match the practices of more than one financial institution (bank, finance company, insurer, brokerage house, auditor, government regulator ...), the answers to those questions may be all over the map, and the number input widget probably will make it all an even bigger mess.