[1] In some commercial and financial documents, especially in Germany and Scandinavia, the symbol ÷ was used to indicate subtraction or to denote a negative quantity.
[2][a] The Unicode Consortium has allocated the code point U+2052 to identify this usage uniquely,[3][5] the exact form of the symbol displayed is typeface (font) dependent.
The symbol is also used in the margins of letters to indicate an enclosure, where the upper point is sometimes replaced with the corresponding number.
[1] The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses commercial minus signs to denote borrowed forms of a sound.
It also provides a convenient alternative means for typing on a modern keyboard, without needing to resort to Unicode input.