As I drove to work one morning, I noticed some interesting abbreviations being used on my traffic report phone app. (I’d normally say “GPS app” but then folks always say “you need your GPS to get to work?” No, it’s not about navigation. It’s about traffic reports, police incidents, closed exits and other things.)
But I digress…
In America, “m” is an abbreviation for “miles.” For example, mpg (miles per gallon) and mph (miles per hour).
“m” is also an abbreviation for meters, as in mps (meters per second) or 3m (three meters).
When I see “5m” I assume this is meters.
But “m” is also an abbreviation for minutes. If you see this:
4h3m30s
That clearly looks like hours, minutes and seconds. And if someone sends a text saying:
BwoopyBob: be there in 3m
…that seems to mean minutes.
Context is everything.
My navigation app shows speed, distance and time. All of these things are “m” words: miles per hour, miles to go, and minutes until arrival.
So naturally, they have to alter the abbreviations.
Minutes is shortened to “min”, which we usually assume means minutes or minimum, and miles is “mi” since, I assume, the app also supports metric distances and would use “m” for that. And miles per hour is displayed as “mph” as I’d expect.
I wonder what other “m” units are displayed by this thing?
- m
- mi
- min
- mpg
Seeing one alone is not enough to understand what the “m” means, and even having a numeric unit may not help… Is 30m thirty miles or thirty minutes or thirty meters? Or something else?
I guess my point is, when abbreviating, always add context. Your users/readers will appreciate it.
Until next time…
It’s interesting that you write mps. Afaik all non-english native language countries write m/s, which is universal even if “per” translates to something else in the local language.
A relevant side track is that sq ft is the abbreviation for square feet, while square meters is abbreviated as m² (and cubic meters is abbreviated as m³).
Btw, does that app even need to display that “m”? I.E. wouldn’t it be obvious?
Like time is almost always written as hh:mm:ss, hh:mm or mm:ss, and on a display you’ll see the seconds count down so it’s obvious if it’s minutes or seconds in the 2+2 digit form. Speed v.s. distance should be obvious I think?