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this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Correct terminology makes your eyes hurt?
It's supposed to say “Mbit” or “Mb”. Capital B infers bytes. Incorrect capitalization is one of the most common mistakes when using the metric system. It may be popular but it becomes a problem when 1 B = 8 b, or when 1 MJ = 10⁹ mJ. By the way, common ad-hoc abbreviations like “kbps” as opposed to “kb/s” or “PSI” instead of “lbf/in²” also grind my gears, luckily most such mistakes only occur in imperial units.
Agree, if you do it, there is no harm in doing it right. However, I grew up with the metric system and I've never seen capitalization of the prefixes being a mistake that happens in the real world. I.e. your ADC can measure up to 500 mV and you instead 'accidentally' put 500 Megavolts through it. That is somewhat unlikely to happen. But then mistakes like that do happen. People wanting to order 500 rolls of toilet paper and getting 500 shipping crates of it. Things like that definitely happen. Especially in combination with computers that just do whatever you typed in. I'd just not call it 'common'.
When inconsequential, capitalization gets messed up all the time, and the mistakes are overlooked: everyone understands that a weight labeled “10 KG” has a mass of 10 kg, but it's better to get used to good practice for when it does matter. Thankfully, the “M/m” mistake of 9 orders of magnitude is usually caught by humans before it gets out of hand: you wouldn't order 1 mm³ of wood instead of 1 m³. Very few quantities span 9+ orders of magnitude, for instance 10mΩ and 10MΩ resistors exist quite commonly, and you can imagine one being mistaken for the other with people copying each other's handwritten component list. However, I'd bet that the bit/byte dichotomy confuses hundreds of people every day so we better make that clear by not breaking rules.
BTW, the word is “megavolts”, not “MegaVolts” or any other capitalization, similarly “byte” is correct unless at the start of a sentence, with title case, or in German, and perhaps in words like “MByte”, which I discourage in favor of the full form or complete abbreviation.
I'll just weasel my way out of the capitalization mistakes by saying I'm German... Or by saying I type too much English on the internet...
In this case I did it to stress it and make a point.
I can see the resistors being somewhat a more likely scenario. But it's also a big difference. A mΩ is somewhere in the order of magnitude of what your copper traces have between two (close) components. And such resistors would for example be used as a shunt to measure current. They're made to withstand quite some current and below 10mΩ I don't think there is even a color code available. Footprint might be different, too.
I know, I’m an electrical hobbyist. Most 10mΩ resistors (no space because it's an adjective) are SMD because leads would introduce significant resistance that changes when bending. Unless the wire is the shunt, of course. They have large pads and are thick to accommodate the current and power dissipation because their main use is measuring current in the order of A.
Meanwhile, 10MΩ ones are usually THT and normal size, the occasional ones rated for multiple kilovolts or spikes of even higher voltage are longer to prevent arcing.