Re: SI units (was: Expressing fractions)

From: Jordan Abel (jmabel_at_purdue.edu)
Date: 01/10/05 

Date: 10 Jan 2005 11:16:53 GMT

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.usage.english.]
On 2005-01-10, Lee Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
> Of course, we use European-Arabic numbers and Latin letters for the
> numbers and units in _technical_ documents to achieve that purpose.
> But what do you expect in a novel? Bumps and lurps of a foreign
> script here and there, or a purely native script for the language
> being used? (Local newspapers do refrain from using Latin letters.
> This is partly because they're set vertically, making the
> Latin-scripted words difficult to read and recognize.

Japanese fonts, on the other hand, seem to have a _lot_ of SI units set
in square cells so that they run with the text - I would assume [but
don't know] that vertical text would use these But, then, Japanese text
tends not to be shy about using european/arabic numerals and latin
letters in general, which you've indicated isn't the case for chinese.