Dear John,
Here is a letter that I used successfully in Australia some time ago.
You may be able to adapt it to use in your local environment.
The Editor
The Age
Dear Editor,
I am appalled at the response of your 'Drive' editor to a letter
written by
Bert Smith in 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 unit, km/h. I have referred to the 'International System of
Units (SI) 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 (or slash) contained within the unit,
km/h. Your travesty of an abbreviation, kmh, is completely meaningless
as it
implies multiplying 120 km by 2 h (to get 240 kmh?), rather than the
correct
60 km/h obtained by 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 also 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
raised my
ire. It seemed to me that the 'Drive' editor was saying to the Physics
teacher, Bert Smith, 'We are wrong when we use kmh, we know that we are
wrong, but we don't really care about you, your students, or, for that
matter, we don't really care about any other students in Australia,
either'.
Yours faithfully,
Pat Naughtin
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]
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to subscribe.
On 2010/08/24, at 22:07 , John M. Steele wrote:
I am glad to see AP including (or leaving in) the metric in more
stories that involve measurement.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100824/ap_on_re_us/tropical_weather
Also, all their conversions seem sensibly rounded, no decimal dust.
Now, if we could just persuade them to use km/h, not kph.
