OK, I found the time to comment Jim
---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Kudos and constructive comments Date: Monday 26 December 2005 16:08 From: "James R. Frysinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear Ms Jacci Howard Bear, Your website provides many pages of extremely useful and explicit guidance. Thank you! I happened across the general page on measurements http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/intermediate/a/measurements.htm and the subsequent pages starting at http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/intermediate/a/basicmetric.htm and I am very happy with them, for the most part. Please indulge me as I make a couple of small suggestions: 1. Avoid "nekkid decimal points", as I call them for my students. No number should start with a decimal point; put a 0 (zero) in front of any decimal number smaller than 1.0 to avoid this problem. Many mishaps have been caused by this solecism. Several years ago a 3-year old girl died in a Boston hospital because the doctor prescribed .5 mg of a medicine (meaning 0.5 mg) and the nurse read it as and administered 5 mg (i.e., 5.0 mg) of medicine, which proved fatal. Nekkid decimal points are gauche in the metric world. Do not be put at ease by the fact that you will encounter many gauche people, even in metric countries. 2. The word "metrics" means something other than what you think. The system of measurement is the metric system, not metrics. We use metric units and prefixes to express values. In the plural form, "metrics" means things that can be measured in order to assess a system, not the particular system of measurement that we call metric (singular). We speak of the metrics one might use to assess literacy, for example. Instead of "metrics", you might use "metric units" or "metric values". Thank you for referring to the U.S. Metric Association! That is a superb organization. Could you add a hyperlink to their home page? You have many other useful links on your pages and this would be a superb addition. It could be coded to create a new target window so the reader of your page does not lose contact with you. regards, Jim Frysinger -- James R. Frysinger Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist Senior Member, IEEE http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Office: Physics Lab Manager, Lecturer Dept. of Physics and Astronomy University/College of Charleston 66 George Street Charleston, SC 29424 843.953.7644 (phone) 843.953.4824 (FAX) Home: 10 Captiva Row Charleston, SC 29407 843.225.0805 ------------------------------------------------------- -- James R. Frysinger Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist Senior Member, IEEE http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Office: Physics Lab Manager, Lecturer Dept. of Physics and Astronomy University/College of Charleston 66 George Street Charleston, SC 29424 843.953.7644 (phone) 843.953.4824 (FAX) Home: 10 Captiva Row Charleston, SC 29407 843.225.0805
