The comma is a soft separator in grammar while the dot is a hard separator. That's why the US usage is preferable. A space is also a hard separator and does not provide continuity in a number.
Stan Doore ----- Original Message ----- From: Martin Vlietstra To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 4:46 PM Subject: [USMA:38953] Re: Increasing use of non US SI spellings Should one write "metre" or "meter" - The French write "metre" and the Germans "meter". I believe that the Spanish write "metro" (though I am open to correction). In short, there is no correct way to write "metre"/"meter" which is why there is a universal symbol "m" to denote it. In this case the Brits appear to have adopted the French spelling and the Americans the German spelling, in much the same way as the word "colour"/"color" is spelt differently on either side of the "pond". >From my own point of view, I use a "meter" to measure voltage, but I measure out a "metre" of cloth. The SI specification is quite clear about the decimal separator - either a dot or a comma can be used, but one should be consistent within a particular document. In fact, the SI specification explicitly uses dots in the English language version and commas in the French language version. The specification goes on to say that one should use spaces as separators for groups of three digits. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bill Hooper Sent: 28 June 2007 18:40 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:38950] Re: Increasing use of non US SI spellings On 2007 Jun 28 , at 11:25 AM, Mike Millet wrote: ... I also noticed that they commonly used litre and metre instead of the accepted US spellings. Is this common outside of the UK and other Commonwealth nations to just randomly adopt the re instead of the er :)? There may be as many people (world wide) who use the -re spelling of metre and litre as there are who use the -er spelling. Yes, it would be nice if everyone spelled it the same way but surely anyone reading it would understand it with either spelling. ,,, all those annoying comma's they're using to separate decimal centimeters now I'm all the way confused. 38,8cm just is weird to me, Again, there may be as many people who use the comma for a decimal point as there are who use the period. It can be confusing -- does 1,325 mean "one and 325 thousandths" or does it mean "one thousand three hundred twenty-five"? Use of the comma as a decimal point is different from what you (and I) are familiar with but there is nothing weird about it. Again, I agree that it would be better if everyone did it the same way, but they don't. A well informed person needs to be aware of the different uses and be prepared to understand either one (or be prepared to ask which is meant when, as in my example above, it really is ambiguous. ... spell out liter and such because otherwise people would have no idea what the L stood for. Spelling out a unit is always an option when the intended audience may be unfamiliar with the correct symbols, but I find it hard to believe that there are many people out there who would not realize that "L" stands for "litres"; and those who don't would easily be able to learn it -- as any well infrmed individual would want to do. Bill Hooper 1810 mm tall Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA ========================== SImplification Begins With SI. ==========================
