Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers: Difference between revisions
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TechControl (talk | contribs) →Symbol for bits: bit or b?: Insteasd of "term" it should be "unit symbol". Then: 16-'''bit''' - here it is a word. 1G'''b'''/s - here it is a symbol. If used with other unit symbols it should be |
→Symbol for bits: bit or b?: add (and should be "bits and bytes") |
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:::My memory throughout my recorded brain history is that '''b''' is a bit, '''B''' is a byte. I'm thinking here of 300bps modems and 3MB (yes, really, three-megabyte) fixed disk drives. Especially in the context of data ''rates'', bit/sec or bit/s is rare in my Western-biased viewpoint. "bps" is common for bit-per-second throughput, And kb (or Kb) is common for bit counts. However, for computer-architecture terminology, '''bit''' is more common: the 8086 CPU used an 8-bit instruction set, the 80286 was 16-bit; the PC-AT introduced a 32-bit I/O bus; &c. (Forgive my erroneous examples). I'd say that when ''bit'' is used as a standalone term, it's '''bit''', when used in conjunction with other terms, it's '''b'''. However, I've not read all those standards linked above. [[User:Franamax|Franamax]] ([[User talk:Franamax|talk]]) 05:42, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
::::Insteasd of "term" it should be "unit symbol". Then: 16-'''bit''' - here it is a word. 1G'''b'''/s - here it is a symbol. If used with other unit symbols it should be '''b'''. [[User:TechControl|TechControl]] ([[User talk:TechControl|talk]]) 08:06, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
:::::That sounds pretty reasonable. Can you cast that into wording for the guideline that is understandable for the average editor who stumbles across it? And just to be sure, are we talking about wording for the [[Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Quantities_of_bytes_and_bits|bytes and bits]] section of MOSNUM, or did I miss something big? [[User:Franamax|Franamax]] ([[User talk:Franamax|talk]]) 09:12, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
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