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Comment by tommiegannert | Hacker News Reader

> 81 uL of catalyst -> 81 μL of catalyst

Oh, interesting. NIST recommends "L": https://www.nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811/nist-guide-...

That line refers to the 'u' substituting for 'μ', the greek letter mu, not the L symbol. https://www.nayuki.io/page/common-mistakes-when-using-the-me...

I've always thought u for mu was a neat hack - its inconvenient to type mu and u is ascii compliant.

It usually doesn't take toooo long to figure out what u means from the context

I agree with u being a neat hack, don't agree with µ being hard to type.

On US-international keyboards, it's AltGr+m

Note: The official SI unit “liter” was written “l” until a couple of decades ago, when they changed it to “L” due to frequent legibility issues (l/I/1). Some old texts use the old convention.

they did not change it, they added it as an acceptable form

Changed? I never have seen the captial L for liter anywhere from daily use to scientific papers. It is always used in small caps.

After I read your comment and went into the kitchen and the first thing I saw was a handsoap bottle what had "1 L" written on it. Weirdly the milk had "1 ltr" on it :S

I don’t know which field you work in, but I do research in physics and chemistry and L is the dominant convention in the papers I read. I also teach intro physics at the university level and the textbook uses L.

In high school (~2008) we were taught that this was the correct new abbreviation for liter in chemistry, but I remember that at the time lower-case l (or sometimes \ell) was still normal as well. These days, I rarely see that.

(Off-topic: “Small caps” is not the same as “lower case”.)

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