It seems to me that, if there are errors in this book, there should be a way of advising the author of the fact and to urge him to get a copy of an authoritative publicaton on SI such as IEEE/.ASTM SI 10. Duncan
-----Original Message----- From: Barbara and/or Bill Hooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: April 25, 2002 00:02 Subject: [USMA:19627] Re: milli words >on 4/24/2002 10:00 PM, kilopascal at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >In reference to a book I mentioned in a previous message, John wrote on >2002-04-24: >> What was the copyright date on the book? And what do they say is the >> correct pronunciation of kilometre? > >DARN! > >I just came home from the bookstore where I had browsed a bit more in that >book, and gotten some additional facts. Now John comes along and asks some >additional questions that I did not get the answer to. > >I guess I'll have to go back to the book store again tomorrow and look at it >again. If I do this many more times they may insist that I buy the book. > >Here is the new information I did find: >================================ > >The title of the book is "The New York Times Dictionary of Misunderstood, >Misused and Mispronounced Words", edited by Laurence Urdang. It is a new >book but I don't have the copyright date. I'll try to get it. > >I don't know what this book had to say about the pronunciation of kilometre. >I will check. > >I did check a few other things today. The book does list many of the basic >SI units (in addition to the prefixed ones I had been concentrating on) but >it does not refer to them as SI units or even as metric. It just says >"(this) is a unit of measurement of (that)". > >It does give the symbol for some of them but it does not seem to give all of >them. The given symbols of the basic units have the same flaw as the symbols >for the prefixed units (mentioned in my previous message); namely, that they >may give the correct SI symbol but they frequently also give other >variations (which are not correct SI). The commonest error is to list a >second version where one or more of the letters is lower case where it >should be capitalized (giving henries as both H and h, as well as giving >millihenries as both mH and mh, for example). > >I looked up some of the micro words, which I am surprised that i did not >notice the other day when I scanned the milli words (the micro words ended >just one page before the milli words began). I was pleased to see that the >symbols for all the SI units with the micro prefix did indeed use the >correct symbol, the lower case Greek mu (�) as in microgram (�g) and >micrometre (�m). > >The book gave a lot of words that began with the letters m-i-c-r-o- that had >nothing to do with SI (microphone, microbiology, microelectronics, etc.). It >also gave some pretty sad examples of the use of SI prefixes in very non-SI >ways. > >Both the micrometre and the micron were listed as a units of measure. There >was also the millimicron, an older metric unit name (not an SI name). Very >surprisingly was the inclusion of the micromillimetre. Multiple prefixes are >not good SI, but then again this book didn't pretend to be presenting only >good SI. What I found surprising was the fact that they gave micromillimetre >as well as millimicron which are the same thing. (Millimicron is short for >millimicrometre.) I had seen the use of millimicron in the past, in my early >days before SI was created (and double prefixes were discarded) but I had >never heard of the use of the micromillimetre. There were a number of other >examples of double prefixes that were not familiar and seemed inappropriate. > >As might be expected, they also gave non-SI units with the micro prefix >(just as I had earlier reported the same thing with the milli prefix). There >was the microinch and others. Of particular note was the microdyne, a metric >but not SI unit. There was microbarns for area (specifically cross sectional >area of nucleii), but I did not know that there were many nuclei that had >cross sections so small that they would be measured in microbarns, but I >don't really know much about that field. > >It is interesting to see these words using SI refixes in such a book. I will >try to look again to see what else it has that might be of interest. Bear in >mnd, however, that this is really just a comprehensive dictionary intended >(presumably) to identify a wide variety of words actually in use, whether >they are SI or not. Of course, it is a shame that they didn't identify which >units were part of SI metric and which were just other, older metric or >non-metric. > >Regards, Bill Hooper >retired physics professor, Florida, USA > > -------------------------------------- > "Simplification" begins with "SI" > -------------------------------------- > > > >
