>You are the first who has felt the appathy of students who have already
>crossed their college and are NOW at cross-roads to figure out *what is
>right* - micrometre or micrometer to measure distances! Likewise
>litre/liter.... etc. Why can't the BIPM and CCU be approached to issue a
>"Papal like Bull" for use of Le Systeme Internationale d'Unites.
Because such an edict would be, well bull ! The spelling and pronunciation
of SI units are not fixed internationally, but will vary from one language
to another, and even (e.g. in the case of English) from one dialect to
another. This is to allow the unit names to be integrated into the host
language in as natural a way as possible. The important thing is that the
*symbols* are the same in all languages. Thus in the Irish language, we
have 'cilim�adar', but the symbol is 'km' even though the letter 'k' does
not exist in that language. Similarly in Japanese (as I saw in the original
instructions for a model airplane kit) you can see things like "2 cm" in
the midst of their native characters.
As for the spelling of 'micrometre' or 'micrometer', using the former does
have the advantage of allowing spelling to differentiate between the
instrument and the unit of measurement, but on the other hand the -er ending
integrates better with other American words than the -re ending, and that
obviously carried more weight with those defining the American standard (who
were entitled to do this independently of the BIPM). Also, remember that
getting metric accepted in the US is an uphill battle at best; let's not add
to that burden by trying to tell Joe Sixpack that he needs to use French
spelling as well !
Lastly, you can't use words like 'right' and 'wrong' in this case. The words
'color' and 'colour' are both correct in that they are the official spelling
of the American and British dialects respectively. Spelling it 'culler'
would be more logical than either, but is neither recognized nor widespread,
so 'logical' and 'correct' diverge quite a lot in both dialects.
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Tom Wade, EuroKom | E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (all domain mailers).
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