Re: SI units (was: Expressing fractions)

From: Lee Sau Dan (danlee_at_informatik.uni-freiburg.de)
Date: 01/10/05 

Date: 11 Jan 2005 01:18:54 +0800

>>>>> "Jukka" == Jukka K Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> writes:

    Jukka> 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?

    Jukka> I would expect a novel to use normal prose, which means
    Jukka> using _words_ (not symbols or abbreviations of any kind),
    Jukka> perhaps even colloquial words (like "kilo" for "kilogram")
    Jukka> for units, and expressing numbers in words as well, as far
    Jukka> as feasible.

That's the point.

    Jukka> "Then we walked two kilometers/kilometres" would surely be
    Jukka> stylistically preferred to "Then we walked 2 km". In
    Jukka> novels, except perhaps science-fiction novels, I would not
    Jukka> expect to see exact expressions of physical quantities
    Jukka> much.

And "We drive at 100 kilometre per hour." looks much better than "We
drive at 100 km/h." in a novel.

    Jukka> Newspapers and similar publications are a different
    Jukka> issue. I can only say that they _should_, in my opinion,
    Jukka> use SI notations for physical quantities, both for
    Jukka> conciseness and exactness,

No. In Chinese, the SI notations are not necessarily more concise.
e.g. "100 km" is just <yi1> <bai3> <gong1> <li3> -- 4 characters. In
Western symbols, it's 6 characters (counting the thin space as a
character). To be more concise, we can even drop the "1", making it
<bai3> <gong1> <li3>. The 1 is implicit. When context makes it clear
we are using SI units, then the <gong1> can be further dropped,
leaving only <bai3><li3>.

    Jukka> as well as to help readers to get tuned to reading more
    Jukka> technical and more scientific publications (in different
    Jukka> languages).

We have no problems reading/writing Western numerals and Chinese
numbers in characters. We can switch easily between the two.
Newspapers usually show numbers in Chinese characters. I think this
is a matter of style. They simply look better in a matrix of Chinese
characters than the European-Arabic numerals.

    Jukka> (BTW, the common numbers written using 0, 1, 2, etc. should
    Jukka> probably be called Indic-Arabic-European numbers, if we
    Jukka> wish to express the cultural origin. Alternatively, we
    Jukka> might call them simply "universal numbers", since that's
    Jukka> what they are in the modern world.)

I think "numerals" is a better word than "numbers" here. 

-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     §õ¦u´°                          ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

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