Picking up a new book to read this week I thought I was in for a treat, but then I realised that it was going to be nothing more than the old "one step forward, two steps back" routine.

Somebody asked an interesting question on the misc.metric system Usenet group yesterday; basically whether or not it's acceptable to use SI-approved symbols in other areas - such as using the letter k to denote thousands when talking about money (i.e. "he earns £10k a month"). It got me to thinking about how tied people are to certain symbols and how some groups get upset when they're incorrectly used.