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John:
L or l (either is correct), for liter, is
not of course an abbreviation; it's a symbol.
Interestingly, abbreviations such as ltr are
quite good -- as abbreviations! Unfortunately, they're not SI symbols. Strict SI
rules call for the use of either full names or the SI-defined
symbols.
I'd rather everyone followed SI rules to the
letter (so to speak), using either full names or valid SI symbols. However, I'd
rather see abbreviations (even though I find them quite annoying) than see
the persistence of non-metric units.
I have, buried in boxes in the garage, some
old documents from the Gulf States Cooperation Council, specifying the units to
be used in bidding for contracts. They require strict adherence to SI rules.
Non-compliant bids are returned for revision (or they could even be ignored).
The use of standard units allows non-technical people to perform an initial bid
review for conformance to required technical specifications. (They don't have to
guess as to whether gms really means g, for example.)
If contracts involving units of measure were
not legally enforceable unless all technical specifications were in correct SI
units (avoidance of possible ambiguity being the justification for such a rule),
that might lead to better practices (certainly within the contract documents
themselves), which might eventually find their way into marketing and sales
materials, and into advertising.
Bill Potts, CMS
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