Subject: Re: units

From: Tim Pearson <tjp at astro.caltech.edu>
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 17:20:59 -0800 (PST)

On Wed, 31 Mar 1999, Francois Ochsenbein wrote:

>    - the Ohm sould be written with a capitalized O,
>          to be consistent with its origin (physicist's name)

I disagree with this (trivial) point. I think that it is the normal
practice of publishers in the english-speaking world *not* to
capitalize the names of units, even those derived from proper names,
such as "newton", "ohm", "joule", "jansky", "ampère", "ångström", etc.
This may be a recommendation of the various international unions - I
am not sure - but it is certainly advocated by, for example, the Royal
Society (London).

This follows normal english practice, in which proper names are
capitalized, but not words derived from proper names, such as
"sandwich", "boycott", etc.

However, tastes differ; and there are some circumstances in which it
is appropriate to capitalize the name of a unit, such as at the
beginning of a sentence.  So software should be tolerant of variant
capitalization (i.e., it should be case-insensitive).

Tim Pearson
Astronomy Dept 105-24, Caltech, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
Internet:    tjp at astro.caltech.edu