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Subject:Re: Abbreviation of measures From:"Peter Ring, PRC" <prc -at- ISA -dot- DKNET -dot- DK> Date:Sat, 7 Jun 1997 12:05:27 +1
On 6 Jun 1997 Mitman, Rikki wrote
> I'm looking for consensus on the abbreviation of things like megabyte
> and gigabyte, which are typically represented as mb and gb (or, to my
> dismay, MB, Mb GB, and Gb). To me, these are abbreviations, *not*
> acronyms, and should not be capped.
>
> What do y'all think?
Magnification factors below 1001 (kilo, milli, micro, etc.) are
never capped.
The official SI magnification factors and their official "symbols"
(not abbreviations or acronyms) are:
Factor Name Symbol
10^18: exa E
10^15: peta P
10^12: tera T
10^9: giga G
10^6: mega M
10^3: kilo k
10^2: hecto h
10^1: deca da
10^-1: deci d
10^-2: centi c
10^-3: milli m
10^-6: micro the greec letter my
10^-9: nano n
10^-12: pico p
10^-15: femto f
10^-18: atto a
If you cap or uncap all, you couldn't distinguish between milli and
mega, which in some other cases could be catastrophic. Example ;-):
there is a difference between getting .1 milliampere though your body
and .1 megaampere! The first normally won't harm you, the latter will
instantly terminate you in a big bang!
The "b" stands for byte, which should in principle be uncapped - but
in order to distinguish it from bit (1 byte=8 bit) there has been
established a convention of B for byte (the biggest unit) and b for
bit (the smallest unit).
So, the correct combined symbols (then its either an abreviation
or an acronym) are MB and GB. This is in accordance with Microsoft,
too.
Greetings from Denmark
Peter Ring
PRC (Peter Ring Consultants)
- specialists in user friendly manuals and audits on manuals.
prc -at- isa -dot- dknet -dot- dk http://isa.dknet.dk/~prc/index.html
- the "User Friendly Manuals" website with links, bibliography, list
of prof. associations, and tips for technical writers.
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