Sorry, I couldn't find a definitive answer either, which leads me to
think there isn't one.  Here's some of my miscellaneous findings:

The online "How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement" by Russ
Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows: "year
(a or y or yr) "

The couple dictionaries I checked showed both "y" and "yr" as abbreviations.

- for CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, the standard is "yr"
- on the BIPM site I found one paper that used the abbreviation "yr", but 
no papers that used "y", for year
- SI uses s for second, which works in both French and English.  I'd find 
it hard to believe the French would accept a standard using "y" or "yr"
for year.  "a" would work for both languages.

Reasons not to use y:
- The element Yttrium is Y
- SI prefixes include Y yotta and y yocto
- Graphs have a y-axis

David Shatto
Los Angeles


On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 15:52:55 -0700 "Ma Be" wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
> 
> I've tried and tried and tried, but to no avail.  I'm attempting to
> substantiate that the correct symbol for year is simply 'y', and not
> (for instance) 'yr'.
> 
> Can anyone here give me a reference to that effect?  Preferrably from 
> BIPM itself.  I surfed there today for like an hour without ANY success.
> 
> And, yes, I'm *desperate* because I need to provide this reference by 
> the end of today!...
> :-S  Sorry about the urgency...
> 
> Any help is very appreciated.
> 
> Bye for now.
> 
> Marcus
> 
> 
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