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From: rwt@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Rainer Thonnes)
Subject: Re: kByte, KByte, Kbyte, kbyte???
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References: <317B8356.40E9@ov.fr.bosch.de> <4m28li$69o$1@sydney.DIALix.oz.au> <ADAD698D9668D90B3@hearsay.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 16:53:53 GMT
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In article <ADAD698D9668D90B3@hearsay.demon.co.uk>,
slavins@hearsay.demon.co.uk (Simon Slavin) writes:
> 
> Anyone who uses a lower-case 'k' doesn't know what they're typing about.
> There's no unit represented by a lower-case 'k'.  The committee who
> standardised the abbreviations was very clear on the matter.  An upper-
> case 'K' was defined to mean 'one thousand', not 1024.

Evidence?  When did this committee pronounce, last week?

km, kV, kHz are the standard symbols for kilometres, kiloVolts, and
kiloHertz.  Km, KV, KHz are simply wrong.

Interestingly enough, 'k' seems to be the only exception to the rule you
alluded to, which uses capital letters for multipliers greater than one
and lower-case ones for those less than 1.  There's another exception, of
course, namely that for millionths we even switch to a different language,
but at least it's a lower-case mew.
