Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!apple!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!gryphon!vector!telecom-gateway From: hp-sdd!otter.hpl.hp.com!tgg@ucsd.edu (Tom Gardner) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Proper Usage of Units of Measurement Message-ID: Date: 1 Aug 89 08:59:11 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK. Lines: 17 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 269, message 6 of 8 Mark Williams comments about the new "habit" of dropping the "per second" from "Megabits per second". I agree that it's lazy, sloppy and (unforgivably) potentially confusing/ambiguous. My own pet peeve on this subject is authors who think "nS" is a unit of time. It isn't. The Siemen (S) is a unit of conductance, i.e. the reciprocal of resistance, units amps per volt. You most often come across Siemens as the unit of transconductance in semiconductors. The unit of time, seconds, is written as "s". N.B. lower case. When I see, for example, a RAM access time written as 100nS, I note that the author does not have a particularly wide or deep understanding of this subject area. HENCE I TEND TO DISCOUNT ANYTHING ELSE THE AUTHOR WRITES, unless it is, in all other respects, clear concise and comprehensible. Moral: using incorrect units makes you appear ignorant.