Make the guide compliant with international standards

[OliverKovacs]

These are suggestions concerning the Units of measure terms, Bits and bytes terms and Date and time terms articles.

The suggestions are based on the following standards:

• BIPM. Le Système international d’unités / The International System of Units (‘The SI Brochure’). Bureau international des poids et mesures, ninth edition, 2019. URL http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/, ISBN 978-92-822-2272-0.
• ISO/IEC 80000-13:2008. URL https://www.iso.org/standard/31898.html
• IEEE Standard Letter Symbols for Units of Measurement (SI Units, Customary Inch-Pound Units, and Certain Other Units). (n.d.). doi:10.1109/ieeestd.2004.94618. URL https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1337729

Some errors in the current style guide

1. "With the exception of da (deca), h (hecto) and k (kilo), all multiple prefix symbols are upper-case letters and all sub-multiple prefix symbols are lowercase letters" (BIPM, p. 143)
   • kHz, not KHz
   • kB, not KB, ...
2. The symbol for bit is bit. (ISO, p. 13)
   • bit; Gbit, not Gb, ...
3. The symbol for byte is B. (ISO, p. 13)
4. The symbol for degree is °, not deg. (BIPM, p. 145)
5. The symbols for temperature are °C, °F, °R, not °. (BIPM, p. 162)
6. The symbol for second is s, not sec. "It is not permissible to use abbreviations for unit symbols or unit names, such as sec [...]" (BIPM, p. 147)
   • also hours or h, but not hrs
7. Fractions should be written with a slash, not a p. "Division is indicated by a horizontal line, by a solidus (oblique stroke, /) or by negative exponents. [...] It is not permissible to use abbreviations for unit symbols or unit names, such as [...] mps [...]" (BIPM, p. 147)
   • bit/s, not bps
   • Gbit/s, not Gbps
   • ...

8. "[...] one must neither use the plural nor mix unit symbols and unit names within one expression [...]" (BIPM, p. 147)

   • megabyte/day or MB/d, but not MB/day

   Other concerns

   1. The units in the "Bits and bytes terms" article should be explicitly marked as metric. "The SI prefixes refer strictly to powers of 10. They should not be used to indicate powers of 2 (for example, one kilobit represents 1000 bits and not 1024 bits)." (BIPM, p. 143)
9. Altough not part of the SI system, the symbol for square feet should ideally be ft², not sq ft for consistancy reasons. "It is not permissible to use abbreviations for unit symbols or unit names, such as [...] sq. mm [...]" (BIPM, p. 147). The IEEE also uses this variant. (IEEE, p. 16)
   • also ft³, not cu ft
10. Not part of SI, but in. instead of in for inch seems like bad practice. "[...] they [symbols] are not followed by a period except at the end of a sentence [...]" (BIPM, p. 147). Also IEEE p. 11.

There are probably some more things I missed.

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• ID: 07e38549-2cfa-3793-745b-78fa30b2f8ed
• Version Independent ID: affdae42-c0f2-fda3-9fbf-14b0dab067ef
• Content: Bits and bytes terms - Microsoft Style Guide
• Content Source: styleguide/a-z-word-list-term-collections/term-collections/bits-bytes-terms.md
• Product: non-product-specific
• GitHub Login: @pallep
• Microsoft Alias: pallep

[S-LRaillard]

Thank you for these suggestions and feedback! We will take it into consideration.