Dear Bill and All,
Underlying these issues with writing and reading superscripts for
square metres (m²) and for cubic metres (m³) is the thought that the
original software writers (mostly at Apple and at Microsoft) are
deeply opposed to the metric system and its use in the world.
As an example, both of these companies provide word processing
software for schools all around the world with the page defaults set
to 'US Letter', the margins set to 1 inch top and bottom and 1 1/4
inches on the right and left sides of the page. Any student in the UK
has to come to terms with (by learning about) old Imperial measures,
before they can complete a project on (say) the invention of the
metric system in London.
It seems to me that the solution to the issue of the superscripts lies
in approaches to Apple, Microsoft, and any other word processor
software writing companies.
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see
http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY
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.
On 2010/06/17, at 10:57 , Bill Hooper wrote:
Thanks to Patrick for his feedback.
I'm sorry to note that my square and cube symbols (raised 2 and 3)
did not appear correct on Patrick's computer (both appearing as
question marks).
I think the question marks were not an incorrect translation of the
square or the cube symbols. I think the question mark character was
probably just his computer's way of showing as unknown any character
that it did not recognize.
I think it is interesting that in MY message (in red below), as sent
back to me by Patrick, also did not show the characters correctly,
but with a different error. In that case, it replaces the square and
cube symbols with quote marks, one with opening quote marks and the
other with closing quote marks.
Indeed, I note that PATRICK'S message (in blue below) appeared to
contain a question mark (or so he stated) where that character
showed as a closing quote mark on my computer. This indicates that
the problem of characters being misprinted in email messages is more
common than expected. In this case, a perfectly ordinary character
(Patrick's question mark) was transformed into something different
when it was transmitted to me. So, it is not only special symbols
like squares and cubes and micro symbols (mu), but even some common
characters are subject to such errors.
Regards,
Bill Hooper
===================================
On Jun 16 , at 8:53 AM, Patrick Moore wrote:
To me, the cubic and squared symbols looked the same as each other
and were the quotation mark “.
I run Mac OS X.5.8 on a PowerPC G5. My e-mail is MS Entourage
12.2.4 for Mac.
It might make a difference whether you and your recipients have
HTML formatting turned on.
From: Bill Hooper <[email protected]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Subject: [USMA:47798] superscripts for SI symbols
I recently had a helpful exchange with Pat Naughten about the
difficulty of producing the SI symbols for square metre and cubic
metre and others in email messages.
He had a suggestion that works on my iMac but I have no way of
knowing if the exponents I type (which appear correctly on MY
computer) will show up correctly on other people's computers
(particularly on non-Apple computers).
For any of you who have a moment to reply, I'd be interested in
knowing if the following example appears correct on your computer
(with the exponents 2, and 3 appearing as smaller raised digits as
is needed).
Here is the example:
"The cubic metre symbol is m“ and the square metre symbol is
m”."
Regards,
Bill Hooper
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
