On Wed, 26 Jun 2002 08:43:49 Jim Elwell wrote: >At 09:04 AM 24 June 2002 -0700, Ma Be wrote: >>Now, what happened here is perhaps the real crux of the question. Why is >>it that these "professionals" (media people) seem to *notably* "not fall >>in line" with other types of professionals, like scientists, for instance, >>when it comes to writing SI units? And I'm not talking about "literary >>stuff", Jim, since there simply cannot be any "literary" value in using >>500ml instead of 500 ml, for instance... ;-) > >I think some of you non-USA people need to address this question. Your >countries have been metric for (in some cases) decades, and yet your >companies put out products with "improper" metric labeling, and your media >frequently use metric improperly. > True, Jim. Guilty as charged!!! I'll even give you some more ammunition here on this. In Brazil, for instance, we still wrestle with stupid things like 1m84cm stuff. These idiocies get published and used over and over again by people from all walks of life. However, when it comes to operating with such numbers people at least would "collapse" them to propers 1.84 m and so on.
So... Yes, it's unfortunately true that we commit several blunders despite our long and solid metric heritage (more on this below). >If you have a generation or two of people who have grown up with metric, >who have (presumably) been taught proper metric usage in school, then why >is there so much improper use of the metric system in these countries? > Indeed. The answer here though is simple. We do NOT have (unlike many may think!) 'proper' metric education in our schools! Unfortunately we have "cacoetes" (a typical Portuguese word to denote... idiosyncrasies - closest synonym I could find anyways...) that come with the territory and that sneak into our classrooms. In the end though, when it counts, I'd say that people do use things in calcs and all reasonably appropriately. So, yes, we should continue to be vigilant about proper metric usage even in our own backyard, no doubt about it. You're right! >And don't try to blame this one on the USA: having colloquial-labeled >products "invade" your country does not magically translate to causing >improper metric usage. > True. But I don't think that that thinking ever crossed my mind actually, as I was strictly discussing measurement units usage by the media (which is true even regardless of country of origin)... :-) Marcus Is your boss reading your email? ....Probably Keep your messages private by using Lycos Mail. Sign up today at http://mail.lycos.com
