Ok guys Metric System question

Outkast_IRE

Which is correct and can you prove it ? Abbreviations which would you use
ml or mL ?

My opinion is both are correct once you stick with one and dont swap back and forth to avoid confusion.

If anyone has any links to refrences etc they would be appreciated.

Captain Chaos

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

Which is correct and can you prove it ? Abbreviations which would you use
ml or mL ?

My opinion is both are correct once you stick with one and dont swap back and forth to avoid confusion.

If anyone has any links to refrences etc they would be appreciated.

ml is the correct one. Why should Litres get a captial here.

You don't see kM on road signs.

mL is wrong and not in the SI system, it's ml.

Outkast_IRE

Captain Chaos wrote: »

ml is the correct one. Why should Litres get a captial here.

You don't see kM on road signs.

mL is wrong and not in the SI system, it's ml.

Actually im doing further research here and in the United States the national institute of standards and technology recomends you use L instead of l because l is easier to confuse with the number 1.

Just grabbed this from Wikipedia
"Since 1979 the litre may exceptionally be written using either an upper case "L" or a lower case "l", a decision prompted by the similarity of the lower case letter "l" to the numeral "1", especially with certain type-faces or English-style handwriting. The American National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends that within the United States "L" be used rather than "l"."

Delphi91

I have always used the convention that units are written with a capital letter if they are named after someone - Joule (J), Newton (N), Watt (W), Pascal (Pa), etc. Otherwise it's a small letter.

Outkast_IRE

Delphi91 wrote: »

I have always used the convention that units are written with a capital letter if they are named after someone - Joule (J), Newton (N), Watt (W), Pascal (Pa), etc. Otherwise it's a small letter.

Ya that does seem to be the convention, it just looks like the Americans have L or l as their exception....................

Bedshaped

A litre is a non-SI unit so it doesn't obey SI conventions like capital lettering for named units.

locum-motion

Just because the Americans use a capital L, doesn't make it right.
For example, they also spell theatre as theater, colour as color etc, and say "I could care less" when they mean "I couldn't care less" and so on.

The correct abbreviation for 'millilitre' is 'ml'.

Then again, they also spell litre wrong; maybe we could allow a concession - the correct abbreviation for 'millilitre' is 'ml', and the correct abbreviation for 'milliliter' is 'mL'.
How's that?

FISMA

Delphi91 wrote: »

I have always used the convention that units are written with a capital letter if they are named after someone - Joule (J), Newton (N), Watt (W), Pascal (Pa), etc. Otherwise it's a small letter.

+1.
That is the convention.

If there are two uses for one letter, like milli and Mega, then we use capitals.

Again, if it is capitalized, then it is probably names after someone" Kelvin (K), Hertz (Hz), and Curie (Ci) to name a few more.

Outkast_IRE

Interesting input from people on the topic. here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ALitre#Symbol_mL

It does seem that people in medical fields prefer L to be used for the reason they dont want 1l to be cofused for 11 etc etc

Another thing seems to be that Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, CGPM have not made a definite decision on picking which one is correct, they are so to speak waiting for one to dominate and then stick with it.


Also http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter5/5-1.html which sets the standards and SI units ........ "
Unit symbols are printed in roman (upright) type regardless of the type used in the surrounding text. They are printed in lower-case letters unless they are derived from a proper name, in which case the first letter is a capital letter. An exception, adopted by the 16th CGPM (1979, Resolution 6), is that either capital L or lower-case l is allowed for the litre, in order to avoid possible confusion between the numeral 1 (one) and the lower-case letter l (el)."


I think that settles it.

Carawaystick

one of the posts above refers to the confusion between an english written 1 and a lowercase l

In Europe and especially in France, where the standards are based, a numeral one is more likely to look like 7 and a numeral seven will have a cross

locum-motion

Carawaystick wrote: »

one of the posts above refers to the confusion between an english written 1 and a lowercase l
...

And another thing: when expressing any quantity in SI units, the digits and the letters shouldn't be beside/mixed up inbetween each other anyway (the quantity comes first, and the unit comes afterwards), so even if the "1" and the "l" are swapped around, people should still interpret

10l m1

as "One hundred and one millilitres" rather than as "Ten litres metre one", as the latter doesn't mean anything.