Talk:Micrometre

message: In the introduction, it says that "Around 100 micrometers (0.1 millimeters) is the smallest thing visible to the naked eye" just after saying that human hair is between 20 and 200 micrometers. Seems like a confusing statement given that we are clearly able to see a single hair?
--Aleconomics (talk) 17:07, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Visibility to the human eye?

message: i especially enjoy the muddle of a redirect from "micrometre" to "meter". presumably, as erudition increases, finer gradations of metricity become more acculturating and sublime, and therefore more properly (especially at high tea) enunciated with a distinctive eton accent. by jove! Macevoy (talk) 14:30, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Per WP:ENGVAR I will edit the page to use micrometre only, as this seems to be the term used in most of the article with one exception. Btw, wikipedia is not a US page, nor is it british or new-zealandish. It's just english in all its versions. That said, I too find that using "micrometre" here as a means of differentiating it from "the instrument of the same name" is at this point simply confusing to the uninitiated (is it the same name or is it not?), and suggest a double rename: This article to "micrometer", and the micrometer article to "micrometer (instrument)". Seems more standard a solution. What say ye, fellow wikipedes? Jostikas (talk) 18:26, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  Looking at the page for the metric system, upon which micrometres are of course based, it uses -re over -er, as it comes from the "modern" French, who created and first used the system. American English and British English seem in this case to actually be two different translations of the same French concept. Thus in keeping with standard-ness, it seems more correct that the French version (ie: -re) should be used. 13:30, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  ^ Absurd.  Looking at millions of published journal articles, I have never seen the irregular French spelling - not a single time.  Checking the n-gram rates proves this point out... Micron predominates, followed closely by micrometer.  Micrometre is a virtually non-existent spelling.  The article should be renamed to agree with the de facto published consensus. 2602:306:CD22:4E0:DAA2:5EFF:FE90:CB17 (talk) 00:02, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: And the reason for British spelling on a United States web site is -- what, exactly?

message: 1880 Procès-Verbaux des Séances du Comité Internat. des Poids et Mesures 1879 41 Le Comité international des Poids et Mesures adopte, pour ses publications et son usage officiel, le système suivant des signes abréviatifs pour les poids et mesures métriques... Mesures de longueur... Micron... mu
Can anyone find a website for this?  dbfirs 13:19, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation for micron & mu

message: micrometer   -  "About 2,510,000 results" (Google, 3 Aug. 2014)
micrometre   -  "About 476,000 results" (Google, 3 Aug. 2014)
:This is a meaningless comment. Did you bother to distinguish the meanings as defined respectively in Micrometer amd Micrometre? —Quondum 15:08, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: This is completely irrelevant. -- 68.111.35.169 (talk) 19:49, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

text: Are you requesting a rename of the article to micron? That is currently a redirect here and I would likely support such to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings. However, the article is titled Micrometre based on the international SI definition and your unilateral edit warring to change the spelling to micrometer within the article is against Wikipedia policies. The previous post above is almost a year old - rather dated. I've check the article history back to 2004 and it has been titled Micrometre throughout - interpreted as stability. Vsmith (talk) 01:28, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  ABSOLUTELY.  I had not considered that before you suggested it - but it would not only solve a lot of the redirect/disambiguating issues, but would be logical and consistent with the clear consensus in the scientific literature.  Literally millions of RS scientific journal articles use MICRONS.  Just because some French body decided to "deprecate" the word has little to no bearing on this article w/r to wikipedia standards. RS consensus IS the standard.2602:306:CD22:4E0:DAA2:5EFF:FE90:CB17 (talk) 02:37, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

text:  I do appreciate the corpus predominance point made by 2602:306:cd22:4e0:daa2:5eff:fe90:cb17, but there are other important factors involved that lean against a move. Wikipedia via WP:ENGVAR has maintained a consensus for years (basically WP's whole history) that the -re spelling of metre and all of its derived units (such as kilometre, millimetre, micrometre, femtometre, and others) are used consistently across all articles on metre-derived units. The fact that in the corpus the American spelling for µm outnumbers the British spelling may reflect a third variable, namely, the relative sizes of US and UK influence on the sci/eng research enterprise generally and the literature's reflection of it. For example, how many USD the US govt has spent on funding research at US-based universities with results published in en-us-styled journals, versus the number of GBP that the UK govt has spent on funding research at UK-based universities with results published in en-gb-styled journals. It might easily outnumber the latter by 5 or 10 to 1. But WP doesn't use that corpus predominance as a reason to force American English on any sci/eng/tech article in override of WP:ENGVAR; it's just not something that Wikipedia does, and I would say that the underlying reason is that WP:ENGVAR's spirit over the years has involved a main theme of "no hegemonic bullying" re AmE vs BrE (en-us vs en-gb). That is, in so many words, "just because US influence is often bigger doesn't mean we'll change articles to AmE." Article history overrides. — ¾-10 22:24, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Per WP:ENGVAR  "The English Wikipedia prefers no major national variety of the language over any other."  Therefore, we should use the overwhelming consensus, whether it be US or British or whatever.  Your _FEELINGS_ of "hegemonic bullying" notwithstanding (sorry 3/4s).  This is a clear-cut case.  BTW: tools like the ngram tracker were not available at the time this article was originated.  "Always was wrong, therefore, should stay wrong", just is NOT a very compelling position. 2602:306:CD22:4E0:DAA2:5EFF:FE90:CB17 (talk) 02:47, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: We don't change spelling within an article to be inconsistent with the title of the article. If an article rename is needed, then request such. However, micrometer exists as an article about the measuring device. Renaming/moving to micron is a possibility as that redirects here. Thus any such rename would require a bit more work and would need broad consensus. Wikipedia doesn't just go by google search results - the process is a bit more involved. So, if you want the page moved/renamed, you need to make a formal WP:page move request and establish WP:consensus for such. Vsmith (talk) 10:59, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  My purpose in spending the time on this discussion is not to thwart 2602 personally, but to refute arguments portrayed as self-evidently clear-cut that have some errors. 2602, I'm not sure whether you realize how much spinning you're doing toward a preference and convincing (yourself? just others? or both?) that it's self-evident absence of spinning. Per WP:ENGVAR, stable consensus in article history is what determines which is used (AmE or BrE) on any given article or group of related articles. Your "therefore" is incorrect. WP:ENGVAR does not direct anything about "overwhelming consensus" in corpus predominance. It does something quite different: it says keep the variety with stable consensus in article history. My mention of the spirit behind why WP:ENGVAR doesn't support the former but rather the latter is not a mention of my feelings. It is a description of the consensus of "why" behind the current guideline. Regarding stable consensus on style and page name in article history, there's a deeper reason why all metre-derived unit articles (such as kilometre, millimetre, micrometre, femtometre) follow the IBWM standard. It's not just about "some French body" that no one cares about. It reflects the desire for standardization of weights and measures. IBWM is a worldwide body, which no doubt you already know, but you're throwing in the idea of some-French-thing because it helps work backward toward further justifying your preference. Same with throwing scare quotes around the word deprecate. It helps makes deprecation seem more like some-stupid-thing-that-French-people-would-do rather than a normal part of standardization efforts, which is what it is. Lastly, your mention of "Always was wrong, therefore, should stay wrong" is spurious. There was never anything wrong with the article history consensus, and there still isn't. It is not wrong to call the µm a micrometre: in fact, doing so is the SI standard. Again, I spent the time on this not to thwart you but to answer the arguments that have some errors. — ¾-10 16:34, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  There are several good point raised regarding consistency and history.  These should not be overturned lightly.  However, there HAS been a standard established.  It is established by common usage, it has become the de facto standard. So the argument for standardization is an argument FOR a name change in this case. Wikipedia should reflect the consensus already established by WP:RS. This should clearly trump article history.  Wikipedia is not here to reinforce standards established by any particular organization, but to REFLECT the consensus among reliable sources. It is here to serve as a guide and aid the reader, not to promote a small minority spelling to an international standard. Therefore, let us affect a name change to the standard (as determined by overwhelming usage in the established literature).  ProfJustice (talk) 20:56, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

text: It was correct to start with. Read the reference or do the arithmetic.  I've reverted the change. --David Biddulph (talk) 10:49, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  micrometer is the more common spelling, by over 5 to 1