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Comment by holowoodman | Hacker News Reader

It's not you who should feel stupid.

The person deciding to use nonstandard "GSM" as a unit instead of the proper "g/m²" needs to feel stupid...

I'm not sure I agree. "GSM" is three syllables, versus four for "grammes per square metre". You can write it correctly using only characters everyone knows how to type quickly on their keyboard, versus either finding a way to get that superscript ² or else typing something like g/m^2 which is uglier and longer. And you can use it comfortably even if you are a complete mathematical ignoramus (you just need to know things like "larger numbers mean heavier paper" and "cheap printer paper is about 80gsm" and so forth) without the risk of turning g/m² into the nonsensical g/m2 or something.

(But arguably what whoever decided on "gsm" should have done was to just use "g", with the "per square metre" left implicit.)

I beg to differ. You can totally get away with g/m2 which is not hard to type and crucially has a / to hint you what it could be about

"gsm", or even more so "GSM", belongs to the reign of abbrevations and put my brain on the wrong track

Roughly no one already says GSM. When talking about paper you'll hear people say things like "That's a sheet of 120 gram"

GSM basically only ever appears in print. If someone DOES ask "what does 120 gram mean here?" the clarification is going to be "Oh that's grams per square meter" and not "Oh that's gee es em"

I should mention GSM is also probably an americanism. I'm in the EU and out of the five packs of different kinds of art paper four are labeled in g/m2, and one has no labeled weight at all. None of them are marked in GSM as that abbreviation only works in english, while g/m2 works in all languages.

In the UK, "gee es em" was the usual term I heard at the local paper merchants when I was a regular customer in the late 90s - early 2000s.

Of the four reams of paper/card I have at home, two are labelled in "gsm", one is "g.m⁻²", and one uses both "g/m²" and "gsm" in different places. Weirdly, it seems that the specialist stuff is more likely to use "gsm" than the everyday 80 g/m² A4.

I guess the fact that over here GSM was also the term for a mobile phone for the longest time has affected things some.

"The person deciding to use nonstandard "GSM" as a unit instead of the proper "g/m²" needs to feel stupid..." ---> This is the sort of HN comment that I can't figure out if it's serious or a joke. I can read it in different voices and come to opposite conclusions haha

While we're at it, mph and the abomination that is "kph" (= km/h) even more so need to die in a fire.

Some cursory search suggests "gsm" for grammature is confined to the US, everyone else uses g/m² or just g.

It's gsm in the UK too

You mean gm⁻² ?

Well, yes. I was just too lazy to find the superscript minus ;)

Ummm, not really, No.

The shorthand "gsm" is a completely standard alternative in some industries.

I work in advanced composites. Different weights and weaves of technical fabrics such as carbon fiber, kevlar, fiberglass, etc. are always specified in "gsm". For example, some common fabrics would be a "Carbon Fiber 3K 200gsm Twill" or a "High Modulus 12K 380gsm Carbon Fiber Plain Weave". (the "3K" and "12K" refer to the number of carbon fiber strands in each yarn in the weave, and the "Twill" and "Plain Weave" refer to the pattern in which the yarns are woven into a fabric.)

I'm sure "gsm" came to be commonly used instead of the more scientific "g/m²" or "g/m^2" because no one is doing that kind of math about the materials, and it is a lot easier to type "gsm" vs either of the other two which require at least a Shift for the caret or getting out the superscript font attribute.

Interestingly, sail cloth (for sail boat sails) is measured in ounces per square yard, and is just referred to by the weight with the square yard assumed - like "8oz Nylon mainsail" or "4oz ripstop spinnaker". (Or at least it used to be, my expertise here is more than 30 years out of date now.)

> The person deciding to use nonstandard "GSM" as a unit instead of the proper "g/m²" needs to feel stupid...

mph, kph, cps, etc

Yeah, the people insisting on writing those are on the wrong.

Agreed but we do have to interact with them. I once tried to sell a car with 140 Mm and got nowhere. I then changed the add to 140_000 km and got a lot more interest.

My interdental brushes claim that the wire is 0.8 megamolar wide, which is not a normal measure of width.

I wonder if the international society of dentists keeps a standard molar in a safe somewhere

> My interdental brushes claim that the wire is 0.8 megamolar wide, which is not a normal measure of width.

0.8 megamolar = 800,000 teeth? That, uh, seems pretty wide for an interdental brush.

0.8 Mmol?

0.8 MM

The symbol for molar is just the "M". "mol" denotes the Avogadro constant.

That would be 4.82x10²⁹ somethings wide.

It is probably an indication that they should fix their caps lock keys, however. Like the guys who sells bottles with volumes in ML.

I most definitely grew up with km/h, not kph. "k" is not an acceptable way to abbreviate kilometer in a world where kilograms are used.

Curious what you're doing that "kilograms per hour" might get used by normal people in everyday conversation. Fast food restaurant or a weight loss clinic?

The whole point of SI units is to not live in a world of uncertainty, ad hoc terminology, and name collisions.

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