Symbol and Abbreviations
The International System of Units (SI) unit symbol for the gram is "g" following the numeric value with a space, as in "640 g". While some authors use ad-hoc abbreviations, this creates confusion. For example, the use of abbreviations such as "gm", "Gm", or "GM" for grams could potentially lead to serious errors in health-care settings where accidentally transposing "gm" to "mg" (milligrams) could result in a 1,000 times dosage error. It is therefore important to use "g" as specified in the SI standard to avoid confusion or misunderstanding.
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Famous quotes containing the word symbol:
“If we define a sign as an exact reference, it must include symbol because a symbol is an exact reference too. The difference seems to be that a sign is an exact reference to something definite and a symbol an exact reference to something indefinite.”
—William York Tindall (1903–1981)