Today,I was presented with some prescription drug products marked in the
Cyrillic alphabet from someone who had been to that part of the world (Russia,
etc.). On this packaging, the symbol for "milligram" was NOT "mg," but two
characters, one of which looked like an "m" while the second one looked a
little bit like an uppercase Greek letter "delta." I was shocked; I even
remember SI symbols remaining the same in pictographic languages, so this is
the first time I have seen the SI symbol abandoned for something else. Could
this just be a violation of the symbol rule, as we often see? That is, these
folks refused to use the letter "g" in the symbol?

These markings were on manufacturers' labeling. They were not pharmacy labels,
which are notorious for breaking with SI symbolism (in these, "gram" is
abbreviated "GM" rather than being correctly symbolized by "g")
--



Paul Trusten, R.Ph.
Public Relations Director
U.S. Metric Association (USMA), Inc.
www.metric.org
3609 Caldera Boulevard, Apartment 122
Midland TX 79707-2872 US
+1(432)528-7724
mailto:[email protected]

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