Yes, that was labeled in Cyrillic. We fuss here sometimes about the inconvenience of having to deal with the symbols for micro and ohm not being in our alphabet. That and the problem of inserting the raised circle for degree using our keyboards has occupied too much space already on this mail list.
Now, consider someone using a Cyrillic keyboard. Virtually all of the SI symbols cannot be entered from that keyboard.
So, especially for domestic use, it's not surprising to find that they used Cyrillic symbols instead. In lowercase that would be мг and in uppercase that would be МГ. In case those characters don't come through on your screen looking the way I typed them, that's "em" (looks like the English m or M) and "ge" (looks like a small or large upside down English "L").
I really DO have to get hot and re-post my "SI in xxxx" (foreign language) pages. Rest assured that Russians still know what the international symbols are, even if they cannot write them using their keyboards.
Jim Paul Trusten, R.Ph. wrote:
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]
-- James R. Frysinger 632 Stony Point Mountain Road Doyle, TN 38559-3030 (C) 931.212.0267 (H) 931.657.3107 (F) 931.657.3108
