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Subject:Re: Use of K (thousand) and M (million) From:"Susan W. Gallagher" <sgallagher -at- STARBASECORP -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 7 Dec 1994 17:14:57 -0800
John Gear writes:
> This thread has bothered me because the discussion seems to be about K's and
> M's, not k's and M's, as I would have thought.
> In the dusty recesses of my mind I thought I stored the fact that SI unit
> symbols were usually only in uppercase if they represented a person's name
> (thus K is for Kelvin, after Lord Kelvin, W is for Watt or Weber, Hz is for
> Hertz, etc.). Units in lowercase represent units of scale, such as m for
> milli, c for centi, d for deci, k for kilo. I think there are also some
> anomalies, such as G for Giga because g is grams.
And to muddy the waters even more, somewhere in the deep and dusty corners
of my mind I remember reading that K is for true thousands and k is for the
computer-based 1024 (or is it the other way around?). Has anyone else heard
that one?
Sue Gallagher
Technical Writer
StarBase Corp, Irvine CA
sgallagher -at- starbasecorp -dot- com
