I can't believe you wrote 15 pages on this; may we expect 7 pages on deka- vs deca-? I have a few more comments: *On page 3, last tic, I would agree that Congress has never commented directly on the spelling dispute. However, they enshrined in Federal law the meter, liter spelling in the Metric Act of 1866. Congress has NOT passed a law using the metre, litre spelling, although some Federal agencies have waffled with spelling in rules.. Also on page 3, 4th tic from bottom, NIST is acting under their Congressional charter to "interpret" the SI for the US. It is very common for Congress to delegate detailed rule-making to an agency (within a general charter). Based on UK Weights & Measures Acts, this is a bit different from the UK Parliamentary system (I have no idea in Australia). NIST would not need Congressional approval to switch between meter and metre. However, since the Government Printing Office prints their rules, the Federal Register, Congress' laws, I suspect that everybody has to follow their Style Manual, and perhaps only Congress has the power to fight about it. I would point out that the SI Brochure acknowledges the minor spelling differences, and makes no effort to condemn either, although they define their preferred usage and the source of it. This is frankly similar to the way SP330 acknowledges it. On page 6, I think the statement about every law having to consider two spellings is over-stated. There may or may not be an issue in other countries. However, US law does not appear to do this. The Metric Act of 1866 only uses one spelling. More recently, the FTC rules in support of FPLA, and the text of the UPLR only use US spelling of liter and meter. In both cases symbols are preferred, but the option exists to spell out the unit (and is common on 2 liter soda bottles). Only the US spelling is given, so, if what you say is true, metre and litre are illegal for net contents. However, I don't believe it is true, and I think the fact that SP330 acknowledges both spellings would suffice as a defense in a US case. The same might be true in other countries based on the SI Brochure, or there might be an issue; you'd have to go country by country. Finally, a large number (half?) of Roosevelt's 300 words are the accepted US spelling. Some never made it, as an example -t to replace -ed for past tense was almost universally not adopted from the list, Almost all simplification of diphthongs was adopted. I think we just need to accept that American and British English have some differences, and neither is likely to change at this point.
--- On Tue, 4/28/09, Pat Naughtin <[email protected]> wrote: From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:44900] Re: Metric Act of 1866, was IEEE/ASTM SI-10 To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 5:13 PM Dear John, Thanks for these thoughts and dates. I have slightly emended the article 'Spelling metre or meter' at http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/Spelling_metre_or_meter.pdf to suit your additional information. Cheers, Pat naughtin Geelong, Australia On 2009/04/26, at 9:22 PM, John M. Steele wrote: Pat, The USMA laws page includes the Metric Act of 1866. It has been amended to remove invalid conversion tables, but the history section at the bottom has scans of the actual bill and tables. We were using meter, liter and deka- at the time. However, the metric ton (1000 kg) is described with two terms, tonneau and millier, I assume "everyone" later simplified tonneau to tonne, and the other died out. However, both sets of spelling have been used. The Mendenhall Order of 1893 (found on same page) uses metre, litre, and even gramme. Also on the same page, U. S. Grant's report to Congress on the Treaty of the Meter uses "meter" but it is only a US report, not the original. Finally, the Upton report of 1878 seems to indicate that the original spellings of "are" and "stere" (cubic meter) omitted the final "e", although the Metric Act of 1866 shows a final "e" in both cases. These are just data points. I've never seen anything that would represent a scholarly tracking of the situation. Pat Naughtin PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected] or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
