Han Maenen wrote in USMA 21595: >I am just reading this long ago message (I was in Ireland). >I suspect some marketing reason exists for using improper use of symbols of >metric units in ads. >We know how traders in many cases try to corrupt the use of measuring units. >One of these methods may be to use these erroneous abbreviations in >advertisements. >Why else do companies use gr for g, mtr for m, ltr for L, etc? >The USA is in no way involved in this. Cosmetics labels in OZ.LIQ have >nothing to do with labels saying Net Wt. 1000 gr (which in fact, literally >means 1000 grains, although they mean to say grams!). > >Some years ago Irish primary schoolbooks committed some serious errors. >They taught the awful form of 1m67cm, 2kg670g etc and all this then had to >be unlearned at secondary school level were books used the correct >notations. > >Han
I suspect that the bad abbreviations for the metric units in popular usage in old metric countries such as France and Spain are hangovers from a time before the rules for metric symbols were established. For example, 2.5 m is expressed in French colloquial speech as *deux m�tres cinquante* rather than *deux virgule cinq m�tres*. I suspect that *deux m�tres cinq* would be understood to mean 2.05 m by analogy of *deux francs cinq* meaning *deux francs cinq centimes*. Joseph B.Reid 17 Glebe Road West Toronto M5P 1C8 Tel. 416 486-6071
