It seems a shame that the marketers are stealing the word unit to mean something vague and imprecise � just as the economists stole the word metric by adding an s to make it metrics and they now use it for any and all sorts of vague references to measurement.
Pat, I have two disagreements with what you write here:
1. It is not the "marketers" that are "stealing" the word "carbs" -- it is simply human nature to shorten frequently-used long phrases to something more convenient. The term "carbs" (which is not really a word) was used as a short form of "grams of carbohydrates" (1 vs. 6 syllables) by low-carb dieters long before the recent low-carb food fad where the marketers got involved. Pick up low-carb cookbook 10 years old or more, and you will see the same thing.
This phenomenon is very common -- another example: I work with LCD displays all the time, and we rate their brightness in "nits." What's a nit? It's a "candela per square meter" (1 vs. 7 syllables). I don't have a clue where "nit" came from -- but it is nearly universal use by display engineers.
I am not saying this is a good or bad thing, but I do think it is inevitable. I also think it is an unfortunate aspect of the metric system that names of units and prefixes are so long. Single syllables for each would have minimized the tendency of people to abbreviate.
Witness the military "klick" for "kilometer."
2. I don't think that "metrics" used to mean "measurement" is a new thing "stolen" by economists. From the Oxford English Dictionary:
"Relating to, involving, used in, or determined by measurement. metrical geometry:
1650 J. Wybard Tactometria 6 "These kinde of metricall lines (or linear numbers)."
Jim
Jim Elwell, CAMS Electrical Engineer Industrial manufacturing manager Salt Lake City, Utah, USA www.qsicorp.com
