Another choice, the Government Printing Office (GPO) Style Guide, has two advantages over the AP Style Guide: *It is free: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/stylemanual/browse.html *It is correct (at least on this matter). See section 9.62, Standard Letter Symbols for Units of Measure. Several other sections of chapter 9 pertain to the SI
(They do reference some obsolete usage. They point out it is obsolete, but they could be stronger in saying "don't do this.") ________________________________ From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, July 2, 2010 7:16:57 AM Subject: [USMA:48023] RE: AP coverage of Hurrican Alex Dear Carleton, This letter might help. I used this successfully to change the policy of several national news papers in Australia. ## The Editor The Age Dear Sir, I am appalled at the response of your 'Drive' editor to a letter written by Bert Smith in last Thursday's copy of 'The Age' (2003-04-24). I quote your editor, 'The use of kmh is the style adopted by The Age and other Fairfax papers'. From which orphanage was this style adopted. It definitely did not come from any reputable institution. I have checked with the National Standards Commission in Australia, they use the correct units, km/h. I have referred to the International System of Units 7th Edition 1998, and the website of the Bureau Internationale de Poids et Mesures (BIPM) and they use km/h. To make sure, I also checked with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the USA; they use km/h. All of these sources recommend km/h as the correct international symbol for kilometres per hour. The unit symbol, km/h, is correct because it demonstrates how the value was obtained. If I drive 120 kilometres in 2 hours, I then calculate my speed as 120 divided by 2 to get 60 km/h. The fact that I divided one number by another is included in the solidus contained within the unit, km/h. Your travesty of your abbreviation, kmh, is completely meaningless as it implies multiplying 120 km by 2 h (to get 240 kmh?), rather than the correct division. You are wrong in using kmh as an abbreviation for kilometres per hour. You are wrong because you are ignoring all international agreements and standards. You are wrong because what you write, in the abbreviation kmh, is simply wrong physics and wrong engineering. Perhaps it was the nonchalance of your editor's explanation that really raised my ire. It seemed to me that you are saying to the Physics teacher, Bert Smith, 'We are wrong when we use kmh, we know that we are wrong, but we don't give a stuff about you, your students, or for that matter all of the other students in Australia'. Yours faithfully, Pat Naughtin Pat Naughtin was a measurement consultant to the Australian Government Publishing Service, 'Style manual: for writers, editors and printers, 6th Edition 2002'; he is also a Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist (LCAMS) with the United States Metric Association. ## 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/ to subscribe. On 2010/07/02, at 21:00 , John M. Steele wrote: Perhaps you could show them the Federal register article that states the Dept. of Commerce and NIST, not AP, are empowered to interpret the metric system for the United States. Then show them NIST SP330 and SP811. > > > > ________________________________ From: Carleton MacDonald <[email protected]> >To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> >Sent: Thu, July 1, 2010 11:13:05 PM >Subject: [USMA:48019] RE: AP coverage of Hurrican Alex > > >It’s nice that they are doing that, but I’m fighting with my company over >internal news items that use “kph”. When I ask them why they are doing that, >they say the “AP Stylebook says it’s OK.” > >Carleton > >From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] on Behalf >Of John M. Steele >Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 13:18 >To: U.S. Metric Association >Subject: [USMA:48006] AP coverage of Hurrican Alex > >All measurements in this report are dual units. >http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100630/ap_on_re_us/us_tropical_weather > >Except for the kph in place of km/h, it is mostly correct and sensibly >rounded. Has AP turned over a new leaf, or is this some scheme to sell >articles to non-US media too?
