Hacker News Reader

Comment by legulere | Hacker News Reader

> kph

Just why would you write it like that? Why not just use the standard km/h? There also should be a space between the number and the unit (narrow non-breaking is best for this)

View on HN

Four [perhaps] plausible explanations in no particular order of importance.

1. Ars is written for general readers, i.e. it ain't a refereed technical journal.

2. Though there will be only one Will Shakespeare, the English language licenses authors to coin words [and quine quines].

3. Usage is hard, even when referencing the scientific "km/h".

4. Bespoke fact checking is expensive and the internet makes all grammar errors shallow.

My take is that while accurate attention to the specification of velocities is critical to space travel it is not nearly so to the thrust of the article. Boosting research there would little lift the major point. [caveat] I admit to the belief it's almost certainly a calculated mixture of time/money investment relative to the intellectual payload and the magazine's mission.

A few minor changes and this could be boilerplate grammar Nazi rebuttal.

My pet theory is that some people hear words in their heads more than others while reading. I personally hate reading past stuff that I don't know how to pronounce. "regexp", "fn", and the like really bug me. ("regex", "fun", "func" would be my preferred alternatives.)

So when I read "kph" I read "kay pea aich" which is pleasing, while "km/h" is ambiguous. Rationally, I prefer "km/h", but I am irresistably drawn towards "kph". Seriously -- for me at least, the effect is very strong.

Parallel construction to mph, miles per hour.

In my experience kph is more common than km/h.

Kph is km/h? This is first time I see it.

Yes. Kph stands for "Kilometers per hour". Km/h is more common notation, but apparently only by a factor of 2 here in Australia.

https://www.google.com.au/webhp?q=%22kph%22+site:au - 256,000 results

https://www.google.com.au/webhp?q=%22km%2Fh%22+site:au - 523,000 results

Seems impractical. Would you also write mps for m/s?

Miles per second, great. kph is just wrong that we can figure out.

That would be actually confusing as m/s usually refers to meters in second. I would intuitively assume that mps is miles per second, but it would feel strange.

I think the first search is filled by usages of kph not meaning kilometers per hour. In non anglophone countries, kph is completely unknown.

It's a bit off-topic, but kph is not common in my experience. I have a good explanation: this is metric, which is a very convenient system. If you want to express one measure against an other one, just use measure1/measure2. €10/meter, 25kg/liter etc. You can be more verbose and replace "/" with " per ".

Adding constructs like kph sounds like the reintroduction of foot and elbow sizes in the system. Please keep it consistent. /end of rant

It is consistent. It's consistent with mph, which is what people have been using for decades to measure speeds.

Using a / is technically correct, sure, but it's also technical language and where I'm from people are unlikely to use that. They simply wouldn't think to abbreviate the 'per' in 'kilometres per hour' to a slash, any more than they'd think to abbreviate 'miles per hour' to 'm/s'. So, kph.

Even in America, where kilometers aren't used on any roads really anywhere in the country, our speedometers still read mph and km/h.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2011/11/2002-c...

I fantasise that in a parallel universe US, kilometer is considered a singular base unit whereas kilometre is thousand metres. This allows one to write "kph" instead of "kmph" when they want to be consistent with "mph", without getting odd looks from others.

When author can't even get units/symbols straight, it always makes me wonder of his credibility, especially if article aims for technical/scientific title. It's XXI century, there's no need for homebrew metrics anymore.

The actual title is perhaps more political than technical: Why we’re going back to the Moon—with or without NASA. Hacker News has committed a bit of editorial discretion, it appears.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com