Codes, conventions and units: the practical reference set

Practical reference material rather than description: the codes, conventions and units that appear whenever Grenada shows up in a dataset, a form or a technical document.

Country identifiers

Datasets identify countries by code rather than name, and several coding systems coexist:

• Two-letter and three-letter country codes, the most widely used
• A numeric country code in statistical datasets
• An internet country-code top-level domain
• An international telephone country code, within a shared regional numbering arrangement

Two cautions when working with these:

Do not match on country name strings. Names vary between datasets in punctuation and form; codes do not.

Watch the telephone arrangement. Several Caribbean territories share a numbering plan with distinct area codes, so a naive parse of an international number can attribute it to the wrong country.

Currency

The East Caribbean dollar is a shared currency across a group of states, issued by a common central bank.

Points that matter for data work:

• The currency is shared, so it is not a proxy for one country
• US dollars circulate alongside it in practice
• Figures may be published in either, and sources should state which
• Historic conversions need the rate for the period, not today's

The third causes real errors. A financial figure without a stated currency is ambiguous here in a way it is not in a single-currency country, and the difference between the two is substantial.

Time

• A single time zone for the whole country
• No seasonal clock change, so the offset is constant year-round
• The relative difference to countries that do change clocks therefore shifts twice a year
• Business hours start early and end earlier than in many countries

The third point is the practical one for anyone scheduling internationally. The gap to a country observing daylight saving changes twice a year even though nothing changes locally, which regularly causes missed meetings.

Formats and conventions

• Electrical supply — check both voltage and plug type before bringing equipment
• Driving on the left, with vehicles of both configurations in use
• Measurement — metric officially, with imperial units common in speech and in some trades
• Temperature — both scales encountered in practice
• Date format — check rather than assume, as ambiguity between conventions is a real risk

The last deserves attention in any data handling. A date written as digits alone can be read two ways, and the error is invisible until a date above the twelfth appears — by which point the earlier rows may already be wrong.

Use an unambiguous format in anything you produce, and establish the convention before importing anything you did not produce.

Language and terminology

• English is the official language of government, education and record
• Creole is widely spoken alongside it
• British spelling conventions are standard in official documents
• Some administrative terms follow British rather than American usage

For anyone processing text, the third point matters: a search using American spellings will miss official documents that consistently use the British forms.

A checklist for datasets

1. Match on country code, never on name
2. Record the currency of every monetary figure
3. Record the reference period as well as the publication date
4. Use an unambiguous date format
5. Include the parish and island in place references
6. Note the source and definition for each series

Frequently asked questions