I am reviewing the latest (2000 Dec) version of the Authors' Guide, published by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in preparation for submission of a paper. Some things here struck me as being of potential interest to members of this mail list. The AMS is quite firm on the use of the SI (and units acceptable with the SI). Right off the bat, the paper size is specified first in SI then in ifp: "28 cm x 22 cm (8.5" x 11"), with wide margins (about 2.5 cm on all sides)." Then, in the list of causes for immediate rejection, they include "Units not in SI." They go on to state requirements and exceptions in more detail. To summarize: 1. They prefer degrees Celsius over kelvins, 2. The prefer the pascal (with appropriate prefixes) over the bar, though the bar may still be used if such usage is common in that field. The example they give is the hectopascal, though no preference is implied over the kilopascal. They acknowledge that meteorologists often use the millibar and oceanographers often use the decibar. What might surprise some here is that they give the symbols for those as mb and db, respectively, instead of mbar and dbar (as shown in Table 8 of the SI brochure). 3. "Logarithmic measures and their units such as pH, dB, dBZ, and Np are acceptable." 4. Uppercase L is preferred over lowercase l as the symbol for liter and the metric ton (t) is preferred over the megagram (Mg). 5. "AMS accepts the symbol "n mi" for nautical mile, although this symbol is not recognized by the International Committee on Weights and Measures." 6. "AMS accepts the symbol "kt" for the unit of speed "knot" representing nautical miles per hour, but the corresponding speed expressed in SI units (normally in m s -1 ) should always be indicated as well." 7. "In situations where the use of SI units would seriously impede communication, values expressed in more familiar units may be inserted parenthetically after the SI units. Similarly, in graphs, non-SI units may be used as a secondary coordinate scale if necessary for improving the reader's understanding of the results." 8. They want symbols in a compound set to be separated by a space (not a raised dot) and the solidus (/) is to be avoided, using negative exponents instead. Dimension requirements for columns, figures, etc. are given in SI with ifp (sometimes) stated parenthetically. No explicit statement is made, but all examples show a space between numbers and unit symbols in quantities. This is not part of the SI but members would probably want to know that the guide specifies time and date in these formats: "29 March 1993" and "1409 UTC 29 March 1993". Colons are used to separate minutes and seconds, but not hours and minutes; times are in 24-h format. The AMS might be dinged for a couple of very tiny things, but it is one of the most SI-diligent organizations I have found so far. It beats out the astronomers by a light-bulb, parsnip, or whatever that unit of length is that the stargazers use. I'm using the pdf version, but there's an html version of the complete guide at http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS/pubs/ag_docs/ag_mainpage.html Keep in mind that this is a guide used for publication of papers, not guidance for the TV Weather Personalities or for NWS products. Jim -- James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston 10 Captiva Row Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Charleston, SC 29407 66 George Street 843.225.0805 Charleston, SC 29424 http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cert. Adv. Metrication Specialist 843.953.7644
