A
convention is a set of
agreed, stipulated or generally accepted
standards,
norms,
social norms or
criteria, often taking the form of a
custom.
Certain types of rules or customs may become law and regulatory legislation may be introduced to formalise or enforce the convention (e.g. laws which determine which side of the road vehicles must be driven). In a social context, a convention may retain the character of an "unwritten" law of custom (e.g. the manner in which people greet each other, such as by shaking each other's hands).
In physical sciences, numerical values (such as constants, quantities, or scales of measurement) are called conventional if they do not represent a measured property of nature, but originate in a convention, for example an average of many measurements, agreed between the scientists working with these values.
A convention is a rule or a selection from among two or more alternatives, where the rule or alternative is agreed upon among participants. Often the word refers to unwritten customs shared throughout a community. For instance, it is conventional in many societies that strangers being introduced shake hands. Some conventions are explicitly legislated; for example, it is conventional in the United States and in Germany that motorists drive on the right side of the road, whereas in England, Australia and Barbados they drive on the left. The extent to which justice is conventional (as opposed to natural or objective) is historically an important debate among philosophers.
