Folks,
I"ve spent some time recently working on the editing of IEEE standards and
that got me digging again into other standards, especially the SI Brochure.
Being in an editorial frame of mind, I got to musing about what revisions I
would like to see in the next draft of the SI brochure. One that comes to
mind is that I would like to see an explicit statement in the brochure about
the inclusion of a space between the numerical portion and the unit portion
of a quantity. As it stands, all that is there is the obvious use of this
construction, so that we see
273.15 K not 273.15K (p. 96)
This could be placed in clause 5.3.
I would also like to see an explicit statement regarding the relative
preference of the raised dot and the thin non-breaking space as separators of
unit factors in a derived unit. The preferred use seems to be the raised dot
as shown by example throughout the text but clause 5.3 states no preference.
That may be intentional; I do not know.
I would like to see an explicit statement in the brochure that derived units
are SI units, as are the base units. Further, that "SI units" and "units of
the SI" are synonymous. (Are those two English constructions distinguishable
in French? I think that they are.)
We've seen a lot of ideas floating through this space about changes people
would like to see in the units themselves. What I have in mind is *not*
changes to the SI (which can take a couple of decades to effect), but changes
to the SI brochure itself, which might be accomplished in time for the next
edition.
Now, the current SI brochure has passed its fourth year (and a supplement
was issued in 2000). Since standards are usually updated every five to ten
years, this might be the time to ponder what changes we users of the brochure
would like to see. I sit on a few standards committees, as do some NIST
folks, and ideas such as these have a tendancy to float upwards.
So, what *editorial* changes to the SI brochure would you folks like? Those
who don't have a hard copy of the brochure are encouraged to download the
free PDF version in English from BIPM at
http://www.bipm.fr/pdf/si-brochure.pdf
or in French from
http://www.bipm.fr/pdf/brochure-si.pdf
Again, I'm curious about editorial changes, not changes to the SI itself
since the latter topic has been explored fairly well recently.
Jim
