1.2 HOW TO USE SI UNITS

1. Beware upper/lower case letter in many cases they can change meanings.

e.g. m = milli, mega

2. Try to move prefixes out of the denominator of the units.

e.g., N/cm or KN/m

3. Use a slash or exponents.

e.g., (kg•m/s2) or (kg•m•s-2)

4. Use a dot in compound units.

e.g., N•m

5. Use spaces to divide digits when there are more than 5 figures, commas are avoided because their use is equivalent to decimal points in some cultures.

• In some cases units are non-standard. There are two major variations US units are marked with ‘US’ and Imperial units are marked with ‘IMP’.