>I don't think there is ever a need to add a period after a metric symbol.
No kidding, but why stop there? USPS postal codes for states aren't abbreviations either, they're "codes." So why not enable the use of these two-letter codes to represent state names? What's so sacrosanct about metric symbols? If the reasoning is that patrons wouldn't necessarily understand what those postal codes mean, I submit that most patrons have recognition problems with "cm" as well. Even if they know it's a "symbol" as opposed to an abbreviation, many have a question as to why a library in the U.S. is measuring things in metric in the first place.
Granted that this is probably less of a question for international users, but really it seems to me that an underlying problem with many of our rules and conventions is their arbitrary nature. And postal codes have another problem that Mac has frequently mentioned, for example CA likely being read as Canada instead of California. I don't think awareness of metric symbols is really any more readily understood than USPS codes for most.
Mike Tribby
Senior Cataloger
Quality Books Inc.
The Best of America's Independent Presses
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