I've often wondered about the extra letters in words like "orthopaedics" - do the people in the UK really pronounce the "a" ?
Carleton -----Original Message----- From: owner-u...@colostate.edu [mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu] On Behalf Of James R. Frysinger Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 15:02 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:45541] Re: Metric Style Question Jim, John Steele gave a good answer. English tends towards simplification of writing style over time. There was a time that "cooperative" required (!) an "unlaut" over the second "o" to show that a diphthong ("oo") was not intended. I recall when one saw "catalogue" more often than "catalog". I still use a comma before "and" and "or" in a series of equal parts ("Bob, Bill, and Bubba"). My impression is that the "double adjective hyphen" is slowly going away. The SI Brochure and NIST SP 811 demand that for metric values in symbolic form ("10 mm bolt"), even when used as adjectives. The world is still split on spelled out forms ("ten millimeter bolt" or "ten-millimeter bolt"). Jim Jim Elwell wrote: > My grammar checker keeps trying to get me to hyphenate a metric unit of > measure when used as an adjective (apparently seeing the number and the > unit as a compound adjective). I wrote: > > "put all those resources into a 180 mm industrial panel-mount unit" > > And it suggests > > "put all those resources into a 180-mm industrial panel-mount unit" > > I thought I was quite familiar with metric style, but I am not sure > about this one. Can anyone shed some light on it? > > Thanks! > Jim > > > > -- > ********************** > Jim Elwell > jim.elw...@qsicorp.com > 801-466-8770 > www.qsicorp.com -- James R. Frysinger 632 Stony Point Mountain Road Doyle, TN 38559-3030 (C) 931.212.0267 (H) 931.657.3107 (F) 931.657.3108
