I love that they included a note on the pronunciation of kilometer. It drives me nuts how everyone says it wrong.
Common mistakes when using the metric system
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Re: Common mistakes when using the metric system
#82This list strikes me as overly nitpicky. Certainly some of the bad example usage is a problem (e.g. mb vs. MB means two very different things, millibit vs. megabyte), but so much of this in practice just really doesn't matter.
Sure, if I'm doing a bit of formal writing, I'm going to do things correctly. But I don't see it as a problem for people to use odd abbreviations like "mtrs" or incorrectly pluralize as "kms" in informal writing. People will not have trouble knowing what you mean. No one is going to say things like "I drove 3 megameters over the past couple weeks". (Reading some of the longer explanations below seems to indicate that the author is not just talking about formal writing.)
And even in formal writing, a few of these are bit much, like good luck getting people to stop using electron-volts in favor of picojoules.
This just seems silly; it's hard to take this piece seriously, and all of the nitpicky arguments seriously undermine the (few) good arguments listed.
Re: Common mistakes when using the metric system
#83I love that they included a note on the pronunciation of kilometer. It drives me nuts how everyone says it wrong.
Except they're not. In English, at least, both pronunciations are valid. I do prefer the one the article recommends, but either is fine.
Re: Common mistakes when using the metric system
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> either calling spelling I'd never see a "common mistake" (like "gr." for grams) Almost all cooking books I have do this (sample size is not big though, and with almost all I mean all except one). I don't know why though, maybe it's an old abbreviation which stuck in certain text types?
I've got a serious bugbear with recipes using "cups" as a measure - it infuriates me. Who in their right mind uses a volume measurement for foods that can vary hugely in their size according to how long they've been sitting around?
The vast majority of home cooking in the US measures in cups. Certainly there are people in-the-know who are going to be more precise and measure by weight, and most restaurant kitchens will probably do so as well.
I agree it's not great, but ultimately I've found it doesn't really matter in practice, even for baking most of the time. For regular cooking I do get frustrated when I'm asked to include "2 cups of shredded chicken" or the like, but ultimately it really doesn't matter. Being off won't ruin the recipe, and often more or less of a particular ingredient is a matter of personal taste anyway.
I have a kitchen scale, but it's always simpler and easier to grab and use a measuring cup, so that's what I do most of the time, unless the recipe actually calls for weight without giving volume.
Re: Common mistakes when using the metric system
#85The most common error I see is "kph" which doesn't even have any possible meaning. 'kilos per hour' would in most places be taken as "kilograms per hour". As in "my weight increases by 3 kph when I visit McDonalds"
kph drives me up the walls.
I find all of this really funny.
kph doesn't bother me, but I'm American, and we're pretty sad and pathetic when it comes to metric, and it's similar enough to how "mph" is used here that it immediately makes sense.
What makes your specific comment funny is that we're talking about different usage of things in different languages and countries, and in one sentence you managed to express frustration at how other people say things incorrectly, while using an English idiom incorrectly. It's "drives me up the wall" (singular "wall").
Re: Common mistakes when using the metric system
#86I thought this looked like good advice until I got to: > Mass/weight distinction > Incorrect: He weighs 70 kg; Correct: His mass is 70 kg > Incorrect: She weighs 50 kg; Correct: She weighs 490 N on Earth Really?! We’re not supposed to use kilograms to describe a person’s weight? And to describe someone’s weight, we have to use newtons and specify what planet they’re on? Good luck enforcing those rules.
There's a 5% range when converting mass into weight (depends on where on Earth you are). Santa loses a few kilos when he comes down to the equator. It's not enough for people to care, but it can be important if you're building something that needs to carry a lot of weight. This is a very important distinction to make in scientific papers. Completely meaningless for most writing. If anything, physicists got the defini…
> It's not enough for people to care, but it can be important if you're building something that needs to carry a lot of weight.
The problem is that the article presents these "corrections" without being clear what context they're important in. The examples given make it sound like the author is railing against people who use these forms in regular conversational speech. And even the longer explanations after the table still make it seem like the author isn't only concerned with formal/scientific writing.
So yes, in scientific papers, I do think this list is a reasonably good guide (though good luck getting particle physicists to give up electron-volts, or people writing about electrical power systems to give up kWh). But for everyday use it feels unnecessarily nitpicky.
For the specific mass vs. weight example, especially, regular conversation (spoken or written) is pretty much always going to use the term "weight", and using "mass" would feel stiff and unnatural.
Re: Common mistakes when using the metric system
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this is the only one that seems flat out wrong. When I'm on a bridge, I absolutely want to see "The bridge can hold up 3000 kg", NOT "The bridge can hold up 29 kN". Partly because "holding up" (as opposed to, say, withstanding) force sounds nonsensical, but primarily because knowing the maximum load in kg is much more useful.
You never know! Tomorrow that bridge might be on the moon, and how on earth (or how on the moon, indeed) will you know if it will hold up when you walk your herd of elephants over it!
I mean, that's still fine? The max load of that bridge on the moon will just be a different, higher value in kilograms. Since we don't move bridges between planets, it's fine to not advertise a universal value that applies everywhere.
(I get that you're joking, but still...)
Re: Common mistakes when using the metric system
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
That line refers to the 'u' substituting for 'μ', the greek letter mu, not the L symbol. https://www.nayuki.io/page/common-mistakes-when-using-the-me...
I've always thought u for mu was a neat hack - its inconvenient to type mu and u is ascii compliant. It usually doesn't take toooo long to figure out what u means from the context
I agree with u being a neat hack, don't agree with µ being hard to type.
On US-international keyboards, it's AltGr+m
Re: Common mistakes when using the metric system
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've got a serious bugbear with recipes using "cups" as a measure - it infuriates me. Who in their right mind uses a volume measurement for foods that can vary hugely in their size according to how long they've been sitting around?
The vast majority of home cooking in the US measures in cups. Certainly there are people in-the-know who are going to be more precise and measure by weight, and most restaurant kitchens will probably do so as well. I agree it's not great, but ultimately I've found it doesn't really matter in practice, even for baking most of the time. For regular cooking I do get frustrated when I'm asked to include "2 cups of shredd…
I just don't get it - surely homes in the U.S. also have measuring scales? Outside of the U.S., we just go for measuring ingredients by weight which completely gets around the issue of settled ingredients or the inconsistency of measuring things by volume. Why can't recipes just use metric measurements (I'll allow the substitution of grammes for weight rather than newtons) and also provide the quick'n'easy and inaccurate cups measures too?