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> maybe it is the specification that is wrong Noted.... but it isn't. ;-) You have it reversed. The truism you're looking for is: "Just because something is p
by schiffern 3y ago
> maybe it is the specification that is wrong
Noted.... but it isn't. ;-)
You have it reversed. The truism you're looking for is: "Just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's correct." Don't let Likes and Followers culture fool you.
If you want to make your own SI, feel free to use it however you want. If you use the SI, you MUST (RFC 2119) follow the official SI brochure, otherwise you're objectively wrong. That's what standards mean, and they exist for many good reasons.
It's not your fault. This flavor of philosophical deterioration happens when you tell an entire generation to follow their heart, everybody's a winner, and there's no wrong just "different." This mental trap is hard to escape, and worse it impedes self-improvement.
- adastra22 3y agoThe spelling and capitalization rules of the SI system are not technical rules, they are a matter of language and do in fact vary. In German, for example, units are always capitalized in long form. In the field of linguistics it very much IS the case that what is popular is correct. Beginning a sentence with a conjunction, or ending a sentence with a preposition is perfectly fine in English for example, despite what many outdated grammar texts would tell you. I don’t know if units like watt or newton are more frequently capitalized or not. It is common though. In which case it would not be wrong to do so in a blog post. (For a submitted article you’d use whatever the editorial standard is though.)