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From: rwt@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Rainer Thonnes)
Subject: Re: New IEC proposal: 1 kibibyte = 1024 bytes
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Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 16:31:39 GMT
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In article <32D43F5B.2A7B@ugcs.caltech.edu>,
TE Khai-su <khaisu@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
> Rainer Thonnes wrote:
> > A mile is 1760 yards.  A km is 1000 m.  What's wrong with substituting
> > "a" for "1" in these contexts?
> 
> No one cast them in stone, but according to NIST SP 811, Guide for the 
> Use of the International System of Units (SI), 1995 Edition, Natl. Inst. 
> Stand. Technol., 1995-04 (it is available on the Web):
> 
> Section 7.6, Note 2: "Because the use of the spelled-out name of an 
> Arabic numeral with a unit symbol can cause confusion, such combinations 
> must strictly be avoided.  For example, one should never write: 'the 
> length of the laser is five m.'"

That's an example of teh use they wish to discourage, but it would have
been much better if they had given an example where the use actually can
cause confusion.

> Section 7.8: "Symbols for units are never used without numerical values 
> or quantity symbols (they are not abbreviations).  Examples: 
> there are 10^6 mm in 1 km      but not:  there are many mm in a km
> it is sold by the cubic meter  but not:  it is sold by the m^3"
> 
> Hope you don't mind.

Not a bit.  Or should that be one bit, or 1 b?   :-)

However, the publication you quote is only a guide, and (I think) only
a US guide at that, so strong words like "must strictly be avoided" need
to be taken with a pinch of salt.  It's not actually clear whether in
the quoted section the authors mean the word "strictly" to have its
absolute or its restricted sense (does the quoted four-word phrase mean
"must be avoided under all circumstances" or "really ought to be avoided
if you want to be strict about it, but there's no absolute need for you
to be strict"?).

I'd also observe that "a" is not the spelled-out name of an Arabic numeral
and therefore neatly dodges that particular rule.

Where SI units are used in scientific contexts there would normally be
little reason to deviate from the recommedations made in your guide,
but of course neither its authors nor the relevant ISO committees have
any jurisdiction (if that's not too strong a word) over the use of the
symbols in general language, which is perfectly at liberty to employ the
symbols as abbreviations in the broad sense of being shorter to write
than the full names of the units which the symbols represent, in much
the same way as Arabic numerals are in fact abbreviations of numbers
written out in long-hand.
