3596I'd always thought it was a European thing. Turns out I was right, not quite in the way I'd thought, but right sure enough.
There is a symbol to the right of this text; it is a minuscule "e" drawn in a peculiar style. I've seen it on art supplies, specifically paint tubes, for a while. It has to do with a standard for prepackaging weight for products and it turns out it points up a subtle yet significant difference between Europe and the United States of America.
This is what they call the "estimated sign". It is a European standard. Without belaboring things too much, it appears in the same visual field as the weight or volume of the product and it means that the contents won't, on average, be less than the number you see, and for those that are slightly less, that slightly-less will be within an expected tolerance.
The European market, then, is what they call an average fill market. In America, though, that packaged weight is the least you will expect to see in all cases, and for that reason they say that America is a minimum fill market.
The language behind all of it makes even my eyes glaze over; the specifications, as well as the precise specifications for even drafting the symbol can be found on the Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_sign. They are intimidatingly complex.
A slightly less abstruse reading can be found at the page https://www.ceway.eu/cosmetic-product-labels-estimated-symbol/, published by CE.way, a consultancy that provides market-oriented regulation and testing advice to the cosmetics industry. It makes the highly interesting point that, while you may see the 'e' on prepackages sold in the USA, since it's for products shipped from withing the EU to within the EU, putting the 'e' on your USA package imported to the EU means little or nothing, especially when one takes a moment to think about making a minimum-fill product jibe with standards for average-fill products.
So why do it? For the same reason any American affects something European: style. It lends an air of sophistication.
But that's the story behind the 'e'.
And that, as they say, is a thing you know now.
This is what they call the "estimated sign". It is a European standard. Without belaboring things too much, it appears in the same visual field as the weight or volume of the product and it means that the contents won't, on average, be less than the number you see, and for those that are slightly less, that slightly-less will be within an expected tolerance.
The European market, then, is what they call an average fill market. In America, though, that packaged weight is the least you will expect to see in all cases, and for that reason they say that America is a minimum fill market.
The language behind all of it makes even my eyes glaze over; the specifications, as well as the precise specifications for even drafting the symbol can be found on the Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_sign. They are intimidatingly complex.
A slightly less abstruse reading can be found at the page https://www.ceway.eu/cosmetic-product-labels-estimated-symbol/, published by CE.way, a consultancy that provides market-oriented regulation and testing advice to the cosmetics industry. It makes the highly interesting point that, while you may see the 'e' on prepackages sold in the USA, since it's for products shipped from withing the EU to within the EU, putting the 'e' on your USA package imported to the EU means little or nothing, especially when one takes a moment to think about making a minimum-fill product jibe with standards for average-fill products.
So why do it? For the same reason any American affects something European: style. It lends an air of sophistication.
But that's the story behind the 'e'.
And that, as they say, is a thing you know now.
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