Hello,

Perhaps some kind person here can be of assistance to me.

I will soon take up a voluntary position teaching keyboarding skills to young adults.

I learned typing years ago. My favorite exercise was the following sentence.

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.

Does anyone know a metric equivalent? I would like to be up to date.

Thank you,

Jean Brodie

re (Jean): "Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. Does anyone know a metric equivalent? I would like to be up to date"


REPLY: Jean, as in most things, once you have said 'metric divides easily by 10' you have exhausted its advantages.

Whatver happened, by the way to:

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"?

To Tony:

Thank you for the suggestion, but fox hunting is banned too.

re (Jean): "Thank you for the suggestion, but fox hunting is banned too"


REPLY: You sure? Been out with a hunt lately? I hear there are not enough coppers on horseback these days with video cameras at the ready (quite tricky, really) to be able to establish whether a fox-hunting 'crime' is being committed or not. Anyway, it all depends how many dogs are doing the hunting

Jean,

You might find it useful to try your fingers out on these entertaining metric prefixes [see post below].

But be careful not to get your zettograms and your zeptograms mixed up, though - nor your hectograms and your yoctograms.

For 'q' try 'quintillion' or 'quadrillion'.

For 'j' try 'joule'

And do check whether 'xennagrams' and 'xennograms' (see end of posting below) are official now.


[From a xenophobe, who maintains that you'll never get your feet and inches, or your stones and pounds, or your pints and gallons mixed up]


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What are all of the metric prefixes?

Official SI metric prefixes (largest to smallest)
and deprecated metric prefixes (obsolete or bogus) SI Value Remarks Obsolete Bogus

1033 una, vendeka (V)
1030 dea, weka (W)
1027 nea, xenna (X)
yotta- Y 1024 Adopted in 1991. otta
zetta- Z 1021 Adopted in 1991. hepa
exa- E 1018 Adopted in 1975.
peta- P 1015 Adopted in 1975.
tera- T 1012 Adopted in 1960. megamega (MM)
giga- G 109 Adopted in 1960. kilomega (kM)
mega- M 1000 000 CGS system since 1874. Legal in France since 1919.
100 000 hectokilo (hk)
10 000 myria (ma, my) 1795
kilo- k 1000 Since 1793.
hecto- h 100 Since 1793.
deca- da 10 Since 1793. Also deka. dk 1 Unprefixed.
deci- d 1/10 Since 1793.
centi- c 1/100 Since 1793.
milli- m 1/1000 Since 1793.
1/10 000 decimilli, dimi (dm)
1/100 000 centimilli (cm)
micro- m,u 1/1000 000 Within CGS system since 1874 (BAAS).
nano- n 10-9 Adopted in 1960. millimicro (mm)
pico- p 10-12 Adopted in 1960. micromicro (mm)
femto- f 10-15 Adopted in 1964.
atto- a 10-18 Adopted in 1964.
zepto- z 10-21 Adopted in 1991. ento
yocto- y 10-24 Adopted in 1991. fito
10-27 syto, xenno (x)
10-30 tredo, weko (w)
10-33 revo, vendeko (v)

The use of metric prefixes dates back to the inception of the French metric system, in 1793. It was originally decided that the submultiples of all basic units would be prefixed with a Latin root, corresponding to the decimal divisor (deci for 10, centi for 100, milli for 1000), whereas the decimal multiples would be prefixed with a Greek root, corresponding to the decimal multiplier (deca for 10, hecto for 100, kilo for 1000). In 1795, the Greek root myria for 10000 was added to the latter list (it's now officially obsolete, see below).

There was soon an obvious need to extend the system beyond its original limited range. The prefix micro (from the Greek mikros, small) was introduced to denote one millionth of the basic unit. The prefix mega (from the Greek megas, great) appeared around 1870 to denote a million times the basic unit.

It used to be acceptable to combine two prefixes (see above "obsolete" column). In 1960 however, it was decided to name only powers of 1000, not intermediary powers of 10, except for the original 1793 prefixes (the popular myria prefix was thus deprecated in the process). Four additional prefixes were introduced at that time: pico (Spanish pico beak, small quantity), nano (Greek nanos, little old man, dwarf), giga (Greek gigas, giant), tera (Greek teras, monster).

It was then decided that the names of future prefixes should serve as reminders of the relevant power of 10. This started in 1964, with the introduction of femto and atto (Danish or Norwegian: femten for 15, atten for 18). The former prefix was particularly convenient, because it made the widespread abbreviation fm (for "fermi") correspond correctly to the the officially endorsed femtometer. After that, however, it became clear (!?) that since only powers of 1000 were to be named, the prefixes should reflect the ranks of the powers of 1000 involved. This is why, in 1975, the prefix exa (Greek hex, 6) was chosen for 1018=10006, whereas peta (Greek pente, 5) was picked to represent 1015=10005. The four latest prefixes, which were made official in 1991, are also supposed to remind an international audience of the relevant powers of 1000: yocto (1000-8), zepto (1000-7), zetta (10007), and yotta (10008); the trend being that the ending "a" is used for large powers, while "o" is used for small ones. The 5 exceptions to this modern rule are all the 1793 prefixes, except deca (for these 6 "low" prefixes, the long forgotten Greek/Latin distinction applies, as mentioned above).

The last column of the above table lists as bogus 10 extreme prefixes (revo, tredo, syto, fito, ento, hepa, otta, nea, dea, una). The larger of these follow the etymological pattern described above, and 4 of them "compete" with the latest official SI prefixes. These bogus prefixes have apparently not been used by anyone and are not endorsed by anybody, but they show up in tables which have been floating around in Cyberspace... This is probably the result of a minor hoax perpetrated sometime around 1996. [2003-06-22 update:] Other dubious prefixes are also shown (vendeka, xenna, xenno, vendeko) which we discuss elsewhere. Please, tell us whatever you know about the issue...

Jean,

Everything you have seen so far on this page is complete nonsense.

The word dozend is a unit counting or grouping. It is not a unit of measurement. Therefore there is neither a metric equivalent nor a non-metric equivalent.