The SI Brochure allows for certain variations and deprecates others. Any national standard should fit within designating preferences where two or more ways are acceptable. It would seem to me that people should follow the national standard for their country of citizenship, or, if different, their country of permanent residence.
For Americans, the power of setting the system of weights and measures is reserved to Congress (not that I agree they do it well). In their wisdom, this is delegated to NIST through the Secretary of Commerce. As far as I am concerned, NIST SP330 and SP811 are closer to the root of authority than ANSI SI10, and those guides are free. I would follow those guides to American practice, and would consider the Webster, not Oxford, dictionary to be authoritative on American spelling (although both Webster and Oxford do a good job of covering the differences in American and British spelling). Other guides can fill in helpful details as long as they do not conflict; certain industry-standard guides may need to be followed if one is in that industry (SAE TSB003 for me). The US and UK have no mechanism for resolving the minor language differences; it is just not going to happen. Americans should write like Americans, Brits like Brits, and both should be aware of and accepting of the differences, and avoid the few differences that actually result in confusion (we agree on table as a noun, but not on the verb, to table). I do not agree with position that Americans should roll over and spell like Brits. Nor do I agree that American spelling could be generally tolerated but not four little words (metre, litre, tonne, and deca-), at least, not unless the people proposing it can get NIST to accept the change. We should not run around forcing metric orthodoxy on the man on the street, but educators and advocates of metrication need to be consistent, set and teach a good example for others. If we do it wrong, where can anyone learn to do it right. ________________________________ From: "mechtly, eugene a" <mech...@illinois.edu> To: U.S. Metric Association <usma@colostate.edu> Sent: Monday, July 14, 2014 10:53 PM Subject: [USMA:54150] Teaching Metric Units of Measurement Although some readers in this forum are indifferent to standards for spelling and sounding the words associated with metric units of measurement, the persons who actually teach metric units in schools or in private settings, can not be ambivalent in their choices of how to write and speak metric words. They would be perceived as silly if they alternated from one spelling to the other, and from one sounding to the other in trying to be impartial. What standards, if any, should they follow? Their own personal preferences, standards recommended in NIST documents, examples in the Oxford English Dictionary, practices exampled in the BIPM Brochure on SI, recommendations in the IEEE-ASTM SI 10, or what? Whatever their choices, they impart their choices to their “students” by example, whether “good” or “bad” in our respective minds. Eugene Mechtly
