HP TextEngineer Technical Writing Guide - Manual (Page 20)

Company Writer's Guide
[For Illustration Only] B-5
Symbols for Units in General Use (Cont’d)
Unit Symbol Notes
bel B
becquerel Bq SI unit of activity of a radionuclide.
billion electronvolts GeV The name gigaelectronvolt is preferred for this
unit.
bit b In information theory, the bit is a unit of
information content equal to the information
content of a message the a priori probability of
which is one half.
In computer science, the bit is a unit of storage
capacity. The capacity, in bits, of a storage
device is the logarithm to the base two of the
number of possible states of the device.
bit per second b/s
British thermal unit Btu
calorie
(International Table calorie) cal
IT
1 cal
IT
= 4.1868 J (deprecated, see ANSI Z210.1-
1976)
calorie
(thermochemical calorie) cal 1 cal = 4.1840 J (deprecated,
see ANSI Z210.1-1976)
candela cd SI unit of luminous intensity.
candela per square inch cd/in 2 Use of the SI unit, cd/m 2 , is preferred.
candela per square meter cd/m 2 SI unit of luminance. The name nit is sometimes
used for this unit.
candle cd The unit of luminous intensity has been given
the name candela; use of the name candle for this
unit is deprecated.
centi c SI prefix for 10 -2 .
centimeter cm