Re: [PATCH 1/2] time.7: tfix

["Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)" <alx.manpages@gmail.com>]

On 1/29/22 23:40, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote:
> The change to lowercase is correct, but I'm not convinced by the removal
> of the space.  The SI says that there should be a space, and while there
> are some cases where readability is considerably improved by removing
> the space, I think this is not one of those.
> 

I just found there's a newer SI version than the one I quoted.  It
doesn't change very much for what we want, but I'll quote the current
one here for the sake of completeness/correctness:

5.3 Unit names
       Unit  names are normally printed in upright type and they
       are treated like ordinary nouns.  In English,  the  names
       of  units  start  with a lower-case letter (even when the
       symbol for the unit begins with a capital letter), except
       at the beginning of a sentence or in capitali zed  mater‐
       ial such as a title.  In keeping with this rule, the cor‐
       rect  spelling of the name of the unit with the symbol °C
       is “degree Celsius” (the unit degree begins with a lower-
       case d and the modifier Celsius begins with an upper-case
       C because it is a proper name).

       Although the values of quantities are normally  expressed
       using  symbols  for numbers and symbols for units, if for
       some reason the unit name is more  appropriate  than  the
       unit symbol, the unit name should be spelled out in full.

       When  the  name  of a unit is combined with the name of a
       multiple or sub-multiple prefix, no space  or  hyphen  is
       used between the prefix name and the unit name.  The com‐
       bination  of  prefix  name and unit name is a single word
       (see chapter 3).

       When the name of a derived unit is formed from the  names
       of individual units by juxtaposition, either a space or a
       hyphen  is  used  to separate the names of the individual
       units.

<https://www.bipm.org/documents/20126/41483022/SI-Brochure-9.pdf>

I'll add this link to the SEE ALSO section of units(7).

Cheers,

Alex

-- 
Alejandro Colomar
Linux man-pages comaintainer; https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/