Well, the 1/2" vs 0.5" thing depends a lot on context.
if you ask for affaninch, then 1/4"-3/4" might be an acceptable thing.
As a math/engineering nerd, i read 0.5, 0.50, 0.500 etc as different tolerances unless otherwise stated. I read 1/2 to be the same number but with perfect precision- you can write 0.499 as 0.5 but not as 1/2 (well, you can. but it aint right.).