Subject: Re: Capitalization of unit names
From: Joe Gwinn (gwinn@slpyuu.ed.ray.com)
Date: Mon Jul 01 2002 - 10:19:24 PDT
At 02:34 PM 2002-06-29 +0930, Peter Ashenden wrote:
>Folks,
>
>In the true spirit of pedantry, here's a nit for the P1076.1.1 W/G.
>
>In the standard packages, capitalization of unit names is inconsistent.
>According to a document from NIST, correct usage is for unit names to be
>all lowercase. (Compare with unit symbols, which are capitalized when
>they are formed from a person's name and lowercase otherwise). An
>exception is degree Celsius.
>
>Thus, in electrical_systems, the attribute SYMBOL of CAPACITANCE and
>CAPACITANCE_VECTOR should be "farad", not "Farad".
The above rules are supported by ISO 1000, third edition (1992-11-01), "SI
units and recommendations for the use of their multiples and of certain
other units", 22 pages. Clause 6, "Rules for writing unit symbols", is
directly on point and succinct.
The US standard IEEE/ASTM SI 10-1997, "Standard for Use of the
International System of Units (SI): The Modern Metric System", 66 pages,
expands on ISO 1000, giving more stylistic guidance.
One assumes that the NIST document points to one or more of the above
standards.
Joe Gwinn
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Mon Jul 01 2002 - 10:32:19 PDT