Talk:Kilowatt-hour

Examples
It might be just me but the third example I missed the "one hour" part the first few times I read it. I only noticed it when I was about to edit it to "correct" the math and checked the footnote. So I left it as is. Perhaps it could be changed to 24h as I read it initially, or just adjusted in a way that may make things more clear? It's also entirely possible that other people don't miss that while scanning through and maybe no change is needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎209.226.104.178 (talk) 18:40, 4 December 2008

Changing kilowatt-hour to kilowatt hour with no hypen
Please have a look at the International Electrotechnical Vocabular of IEC

watt hour non-SI unit of active energy: 1 Wh ≔ 3 600 J

Note 1 to entry: The multiple kilowatt hour, kWh, is commonly used for billing consumers of electric energy and is therefore indicated on electric energy meters.

ISO specifies in ISO 80000-1:2009 "Quantities and units -- Part 1: General": 7.2.4 English names of compound units In the English language, the name of the product of two units is the concatenation of the two names, separated by a space.

ISO and IEC are internationally the most relevant standard setting organisations, do you agree? --Gunnar (talk) 18:42, 15 July 2017 (UTC)


 * en.wiki is an american/english project, not international. While unit symbols rules are to be followed as international consensus has agreed (but the continentals mostly don't, as stated just above, Note 1), instead, unit language naming, which has nothing to do with the mathematical notations, have to follow the natural and recognizable criteria of currently used language. --Robertiki (talk) 01:14, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Robert, I can't agree to your message. First, which continent do you mean (Africa, America, Asia, Australia, Europe)? Second, what do you mean with stated in the note? The note only explains the use of the k-factor (k means times 1000) for billing end consumers. Recently I have seen in Asia meters using kWh and not watt hours. Third, en.wiki is a language sign as written on the left hand side of this web page, not a country sign. Therefore, anybody who speaks and writes English can use the en.wiki part. If you prefer Chinese, use are allowed to use zh.wiki https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8D%83%E7%93%A6%C2%B7%E6%99%82 even if you are born in Japan. --Gunnar (talk) 22:45, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * As per WP:COMMONNAME. And beside the hyphen question was not discussed in 2008, when page was changed fromt watt-hour to kilowatt hour. So also page name should be moved to Kilowatt-hour. --Robertiki (talk) 01:29, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I would not give any weight to what ISO and IEC say. I stand by my comment from the last time we discussed this: Use the "name most typically used in reliable sources." At the time I was under the impression this meant no hyphen, but others disagreed. Care to flog this horse again? Kendall-K1 (talk) 13:10, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Avoid the specialized-style fallacy, outlined in WP:SPECIALSTYLE as "Wikipedia has its own set of guidelines for article layout and naming. Facts on a subject should be drawn from reliable sources, but how content is styled is a matter for the Wikipedia community." We don't have to bend hyphenation to please ISO and IEC. All major dictionaries hyphenate kilowatt-hour, and so should we. Chris the speller   yack  15:36, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
 * "I would not give any weight to what ISO and IEC say." Ah, really? Did you ever try to change "watt hour" into "watt-hour"? It is rather easy, if you give a simple explanation that your suggestion is right and Electropedia's term is wrong. I did find and report a few spelling mistakes. --Gunnar (talk) 22:45, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Please help us improve Electropedia! If you have any comments or suggestions on Electropedia or specific terms and definitions, we want to hear from you. Please send an e-mail to terminology@iec.ch.

Regarding "name most typically used in reliable sources", if found that in the NIST Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI), 2008, page 55 "watt hour" is also written without hyphen. --Gunnar (talk) 18:48, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

The consumption of electric vehicles is expressed in kWh/100 km
I don't think this is always true: "The consumption of electric vehicles is expressed in kWh/100 km". For example, the US EPA several different units, including "kW·hrs per 100 miles", but not kWh/100 km, as can be seen on the window sticker. I would suggest changing "is" to "may be". Kendall-K1 (talk) 20:35, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Sorry for not responding earlier. I just wanted to write that either 1 kWh/100 km or 1 kWh/100 miles contains kWh. It makes sense to mention the consumption of electric vehicles, here. I performed a small calculation for you. 1 kWh/100 km = 36 N or 1 kWh/100 miles = 22.37 N

Here is a European website:. The consumption is given in kWh/100 km, --JeffMik1 (talk) 18:52, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Where does it say "The rate of energy consumption of electric vehicles is often expressed in kWh/100 km" on that web site? I can't find it. Kendall-K1 (talk) 19:23, 17 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Here you have : website Spritmonitor. It is interesting, insn't it? --JeffMik1 (talk) 17:18, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm starting to think this may be a case of WP:OR. Kendall-K1 (talk) 17:29, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

It is difficult to convince you that I'm right. Look here, please: Electric car energy efficiency The efficiency is given in kWh/100 km or in kWh100 miles. Do you agree? Thank you, --JeffMik1 (talk) 16:20, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not interested in your (or my) opinion as to whether you are right. I'm asking for verifiability, which is part of the Five pillars. Kendall-K1 (talk) 17:28, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Here is the official site of the United States Department of Energy, which is responsible for energy in the US:. Here, efficiency is given in kWh/100 mile. If you prefer this unit, please replace kWh/100 km through kWh/100 mile (with the conversion factor 1 kWh/100 mile = 1.609344 kWh/100 km). Thanks, but I'm sorry. I give up, --JeffMik1 (talk) 19:32, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

kWh versus kW·h
In this edit, kWh was changed to kW·h, among other things. While kW·h might in principle be the most "preferred" way by SI standards, it's not at all consistent with the actual use in almost all reliable sources.

It is also one of the situations where there is no chance of misunderstandings, which is the entire reason for using "·"; metre-second has to be written m·s (or perhaps m s) so it is not mistaken for ms (millisecond). But this is not the case with kWh; there is no risk of misunderstanding.

Also, a search on Google for "kW·h" in quotes gives a meagre 38.000 results, whereas a search for "kWh" in quotes gives 96 million results. So according to Google's index, kWh is used 25,000 times as much as kW·h on the internet.

So being "consistent" with writing kW·h on Wikipedia alone, separated from almost all the rest of the world, seems close to meaningless, even close to ridiculous.

The Manual of Style for Wikipedia, in MOS:UNITNAMES, also states:


 * "Indicate a product of unit symbols with  or  . Examples: ms = millisecond; m⋅s or m s = metre-second.


 * Exception: In some topic areas, such as power engineering, certain products take neither space nor &sdot;. Follow the practice of reliable sources in the article's topic area. Examples: Wh, VA, Ah; kWh, MVA, GAh."

So I strongly believe we should consistently use kWh (as well as Wh, Ah, MWh, GAh, GWh, etc.) and not the almost never in real life used kW·h in this article (as well as in general on Wikipedia). And I believe the Manual of Style even states that we must, which makes total sense. We can mention that according to SI, kW·h (etc.) would be more correct (if that is true), but that it is almost never used, so therefore we use kWh (etc.) on Wikipedia to be consistent with the overwhelming use in almost all publications.

--Jhertel (talk) 23:37, 4 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I was just reading up on this as well. I actually think we should remove the exception in MOS:UNIT, since it makes no sense to have it be different in this case. As you said, if it exists for newton-metre and metre-second, it should exist for everything else. As for consistency with "the rest of the world" a.k.a. reliable sources, we do things "against the grain" so to speak for many other things; e.g., always use spaces to separate unit quantities and symbols, whereas many (if not most) publications don't follow this guidance from the SI. Same thing with using &prime; for feet instead of ft and &Prime; for inches instead of in. So it's a question of where do we put our foot down, and where do we not. I think we should follow the SI in all matters related to the SI, which MOS:UNIT actually suggests in a lot of cases. Regarding my edit, I mainly changed it in a wholesale attempt to the fix the issue of kWh being purported as a symbol, which it is not; it's an abbreviation. Since many of the templates seem to have the word "Symbol" hard-coded into them, and since it would be inconsistent to use kW·h and kWh mixed together, I ended up changing them all for consistency. I can change the instances in the prose where kW·h is used back to kWh, but I'm entirely against claiming that kWh is a symbol. Getsnoopy (talk) 17:51, 5 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your reply. I can see that you want to make Wikipedia the best possible source of correct information, and I really appreciate that. I also appreciate that you want consistency and that things should make sense. I myself am like that and always strive for consistency and correctness.


 * In this case, I do not think we should blindly follow the recommendations from SI (which I have not read, but I assume it is true that they recommend always using the dot). I, and clearly most of the world, disagree with parts of those recommendations. I do like consistency, but not at any cost. In this case consistency with the simple rule makes writing kilowatt-hours unnecessarily complicated. The key is here is unnecessarily: There is literally no chance of misunderstanding in the case of kWh and the other similarly mentioned units. kWh could mean nothing else than kilowatt-hours, no matter the context. This is not the case with milliseconds (ms) versus metre-seconds (m·s), so in that case the only rational thing to do is use the dot in metre-seconds (m·s).


 * You said that I said that "if it exists for newton-metre and metre-second, it should exist for everything else". I'm sorry if I didn't explain myself clearly, but I kind of meant the opposite. My view is that if there is a risk of misunderstanding, the dot should be used. But not otherwise. And according to the searches on Google, a huge majority of 99.996% seem to agree with me on this, at least when it comes to kWh.


 * My central point is that there is no risk of misunderstanding of kWh, so there is no point in placing the dot. The same actually goes for newton-metre: Nm cannot be misunderstood (N is not an SI prefix), so there is no reason to use a dot there either. Just like we write xy in maths with no risk of misunderstanding, even though x·y might be the most correct and "consistent" way of writing it. So to me, we can still actually go for full consistency by having a consistent rule that says that in cases where there is risk of misunderstanding (such as a unit starting with m for metre), the dot must be used, but otherwise not. That's still consistency.


 * Regarding your point about whether kWh is a symbol or not, I'm completely with you. We should absolutely not name it something it's not. I don't know about the precise definition of "symbol" in this case, but I believe you. I'm totally fine with not stating kWh as a symbol if it's not, but I would then add "abbreviation" or similar as a field in the infobox template, so it can be stated clearly in the infobox that "kWh" is what is used in almost all practical cases. Maybe even "Symbol" should be changed to "Official symbol" or something that similarly indicates that this is the official recommendation but not necessarily what is used by professionals.


 * The important thing is to be correct about our statements about the world. If something is not a symbol, it must not be mentioned as such. But then we must mention what it is. The fact is that kWh (etc.) is the notation that is used, and if it's not a symbol, we should state what it is, in the infobox. As there are more exceptions than kWh, the infobox should be changed, so we consistently mention how the units are written by professionals in all articles about units.


 * Thank you for proposing to change the instances in the prose where kW·h is used back to kWh. That is the only thing I ask, and I would appreciate a lot if you would do that. I prefer that you do it so I don't mess up, as it's not just a search and replace. Thank you in advance for that. Again, I agree completely when it comes to not calling kWh a symbol if the SI system clearly states it is not. And again (sorry that I tend to repeat myself, it must be some kind of brain malfunction), I think we should make provisions in the infobox template for abbreviations or normally used abbreviations. All provided that what you state about symbols is correct, which my general trust in my fellow human beings bids me to believe. Thanks again for your nice forthcomingness, and for insisting on consistency and correctness!


 * Also thank you for reading all the way to the end of this novel. I hope it made some sort of sense. --Jhertel (talk) 19:58, 5 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Ah, but see, therein lies the issue. The problem with having a rule about omitting the multiplication dot when there's no risk of ambiguity is that it runs into the problem of unknown unknowns. For that rule to work perfectly, everyone would have to be aware of all possible symbols and opportunities for ambiguity, which is impractical. Take, for example, the symbol kWb. As per SI, it's the kiloweber, a unit of magnetic flux. But if someone were to apply your rule of "consistency in inconsistency", it could also read as a kilowatt-barn (kW⋅b) or even a kilowatt-bit (if one is to follow old guidance about what the symbol for the digital unit "bit" is). Similarly for the symbol ha, which in SI (technically associative non-SI) would be a hectare, but it could also be the hour-are (h⋅a). Now, these units are nonsensical, but the point is that someone whose knowledge only extends to that of watts and bits, for example, would be unaware of the weber and omit the dot making things more complicated than they were. Inevitably, one of these deviations will "win", and you will end up having to spend time and effort disambiguating when it wasn't necessary in the first place. Furthermore, what isn't a prefix or symbol today could be in the future, as the SI is a standard that changes to accommodate larger quantities and newer units.


 * Regarding its utility, the point of the dot is not to disambiguate, but to explicitly indicate that it's a compound unit. It's actually not a cost, but a huge benefit to make it clear that it's a compound unit. Your argument could actually also be used the other way as well: the cost of consistency with the "rest of the world" is that it lacks clarity and deviates from standards; nobody would be baffled by seeing kW⋅h for the kilowatt-hour, but writing kWh would definitely be less clear. This actually has happened: in the US (especially in government), they now write the name of the unit as "kilowatthour", as if it's one word because they've been writing kWh for a long time. Clearly, this abomination is reprehensible and undesirable. The point about having to write the unit is frankly not a concern for WP, as there are templates that do it for you. And if you truly are in a situation where you have to write it without the help of formatting tools or are in an ASCII-only situation, you can use a space as well. Which addresses your point about the analogy with maths: in the SI, multiplication is indicated with either a dot operator (centred dot or half-high dot) or a space; juxtaposition does not mean multiplication. This is precisely the reason writing "10s" to mean "10 seconds" is incorrect in the SI; it has to be written 10 s because it indicates a multiplication between the quantity "10" and the unit symbol "s" (second). It also avoids the issue of grammatical ambiguity in English where "10s" would mean "tens", and not "ten seconds". There's a reason for this: juxtaposition is reserved for scaling pre-existing units (using prefixes; e.g., ms for the millisecond, etc.) and for multi-character unit symbols (e.g., Pa for the pascal, Wb for the weber, etc.).


 * And it's not that the world "disagrees" with the recommendations. (They're actually not recommendations, in fact. They're rules set by the BIPM for using the SI; let's not forget that the SI is a standard that is defined and governed by the BIPM, which all its member countries pay into to have a say in its decisions on matters. So, it's not "the world vs. the BIPM"; the world almost literally defined the SI together.) It's just that everyday people (including news publications) are lazy and/or indifferent. It's because the dot operator is not directly available on (especially English) keyboards, so they take the easy way out, not knowing that the space is also a valid way to write the units. Or, they do use the space because it's easier to type, but it's also easier to misread as the absence of a space, and it ends up collapsing anyway. This gets popularized, so their readership thinks that that's indeed the official way to write those symbols, and then—because it's now "popular"—misguided institutions like the IEEE and ASTM create their own standard that allows for omitting the dots in symbols, and companies inevitably use that as licence to omit them. The deviation from the actual standard then becomes ossified, and we end up in a situation like the very one we're in where outlets like Wikipedia have to change their practices to deviate from standards due to "reliable sources" saying otherwise.


 * As for actually changing it, I agree that some sort of change to the templates would be in order if we want to keep doing that. I'm not privileged enough to be able to change a lot of the templates, so some admin would have to do it. Or, we could just get rid of the senseless rule to blindly "follow reliable sources" and just say that we only follow SI practices, which would solve all of our problems :) Getsnoopy (talk) 02:12, 6 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia should not be used to set rules. It should follow common use in reliable sources and avoid WP:OR. This is the accepted practice since the establishment of Wikipedia. I will revert to the overwhelmingly more common kWh. --Ita140188 (talk) 03:38, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Variety of English, date format
The only instance of a spelling I can find that differs among varieties of English is this edit from 2010, which uses the word "centred". However, that is contained in a quote, and in quotes the spelling of the source is retained regardless of the spelling conventions of the work containing the quote. So I can find no basis rooted in spelling of words to prefer any particular variety of English.

Aside from spelling, the grammar of the article just seems more American than British to me.

Some people, including me, feel dmy dates go better with British and Oxford spelling, and mdy dates go better with American spelling. The earliest introduction of a date, precise to the day, is in this edit from 2008, by Ben MacDui which contains 9 January 2008 (I have removed date linking, which is too painful to reproduce). I do not see any discussion in the talk page or its archives about choosing a date format. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:39, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Since the first date used was dmy, we should use dmy in the article. It also makes sense since the article is clearly of international scope and mdy is widely used only in the US. --Ita140188 (talk) 16:05, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I second this opinion. This is also corroborated by words such as "kilometre". I also felt it was an unspoken rule (a "given", even) that all SI and SI-related articles use Oxford conventionally, as this is what the SI and BIPM use. And DMY to naturally follow. Getsnoopy (talk) 18:01, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * As for "as this is what the SI and BIPM use", the SI is a system, not an organization; it doesn't use anything. Perhaps BIPM does use Oxford English as a secondary language, although their primary language seems to be French. In any case, SI was approved by the CGPM, which is essentially a periodic convention of national representatives; BIPM minds the store in between meetings of the CGPM. I wonder what languages the CGPM uses?
 * All the products of the CGPM and BIPM are aspirational in nature; it actually gets enforced by passage of laws in the member countries, who also empower local officials to enforce the law. Each country writes it's SI-related laws in the local language variant(s). In the US, the laws and rules are written in American English, and enforced by weights and measures inspectors of the several states. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:19, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I meant to write "SI brochure", not "SI"; my mistake. As for the BIPM being merely a "store" of information resulting from the CGPM, this is not strictly true. The member countries of the BIPM are meant to adhere to the rules set out by the BIPM, of which one is to recognize the BIPM as the ultimate authority on all matters relating to the SI and another is to recognize that its French documents are the sources-of-truth for all things SI-related. I've worked directly with the director of the BIPM, and he has already officially stated that using meter in English to refer to the unit of length is "deprecated" and should not be used. Regarding enforcement, what you say is true, as the BIPM is an intergovernmental organization without any national jurisdiction, but that is neither here nor there. The topic is what is correct for the SI, and my point is that there is a correct way, at least in English and French. Getsnoopy (talk) 23:11, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * why would the language variety in an article be based on the variety used in a publication of just one specific primary source that covers a subject that is related to the subject of the article? Wiki policy covers language variety choice, and it doesn't say to choose it on that basis. -- DeFacto (talk). 20:27, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Because the BIPM is the canonical source for all matters related to the SI. And again, like I said, it is not a codified rule, but seemed like a convention seeing as I couldn't find any other SI-related article not using Oxford English. Getsnoopy (talk) 23:11, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * the BIPM might be the source for current SI unit definitions and the like, but don't forget that the etymology of some of the words they use to name those units dates back a century or more before the BIPM even came into existence. They certainly do not control the English language and they do not (and cannot) dictate the language variety or spelling that publications use when describing the units that they develop the definitions for.
 * And when you wrote "I couldn't find any other SI-related article not using Oxford English", did you actually look for any? How about; International System of Units (British English), International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) (British English), Metric system (British English). And of the articles on the seven base units, none specify Oxford English, with Ampere, Candela, Kelvin, Metre and Mole specifying British English, Second specifying American English, and Kilogram not specifying any particular variety. -- DeFacto (talk). 07:05, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * While the etymology is older, many, if not most, of the words come from older metric systems, all of which ultimately emanate from the first metric system; the SI is merely a modern-day, standardized version of that. They don't control the language variety of publications, but they control the unit names themselves in French and English. It is true, however, that there is no "world police" that is going to punish someone for not using them as outlined, as I said above. But then again, that isn't really the point. I'm merely suggesting that the fact that they control the unit names and use Oxford English in their publications serves as a good model for Wiki articles as well, as it's the most international and mirrors that of the organization itself which is the source on these matters.
 * Not including the articles on BIPM and Metric system, all of the unit ones you mentioned except for Kelvin, Metre, and Mole are not tagged at all and have instances of "-ize" suffixes used. These could pass as Oxford as much as they can as British. Getsnoopy (talk) 18:15, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * the BIPM don't control English spellings, they have no authority to. Spellings evolve over time and by locality, and the BIPM cannot (and don't claim to, are can you show otherwise?) control that. Do you think they can get the US to change the spellings of words that they have spelt that way since before the BIPM even came about?
 * And the articles you say aren't tagged for Engvar are all tagged, as I said. Some in the article page itself and others in their talkpages, which is the original way of doing it. -- DeFacto (talk). 18:33, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Again, authority is a tangential subject. If authority were being considered, then neither does it have the authority to control the French spellings; any French-speaking nation/organization/person could use whatever spelling they like, and the BIPM wouldn't bring in Interpol, for example, to punish them. This is no different to how the Russians, for example, largely ignore the specification and even use their own "transliterated" unit symbols domestically; the BIPM would need a lot of luck if it wanted to fight the Russians. It's about what is prescribed, and the BIPM prescribes the spelling of the units in French primarily and English secondarily.
 * As I've said in the conversation thread with @Jc3s5h above, I've personally spoken to the director who's said that it is deprecated to use the spelling "meter", as "metre" is the canonical spelling. He even agreed to remove the note in the SI brochure that says something to the effect of "metre and litre are also spelled meter and liter in some countries" because he said that that's incorrect, but then "reconsidered" after talking to the representatives of the affected constituent countries of the CGPM; namely, the US. Regarding getting the US to spell things a certain way: the US spelled those words the same way as everyone else even until as recently as the 1970s before fickle politicians decided to "standardize" on something that is diametrically the opposite of what the rest of the world was doing purely based on nationalistic fervour. This power rests in the Secretary of Commerce and by proxy the Director of NIST, and it could be changed with the stroke of a pen; it has nothing to do with "US English" per se. Getsnoopy (talk) 07:22, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * what makes you think that the BIPM "prescribe" spellings in either English or French - can you cite any reliable sources that support that view? And why do you think they only prescribe them for two, and not all languages?
 * And do you now accept my findings that British English is the Engvar used in all but a couple of the the SI-related articles that I listed, and that Oxford English wasn't specified for any of them? -- DeFacto (talk). 09:20, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The SI brochure, along with the Treaty of the Metre itself are reliable sources for the French case, and all signatories to the Treaty concede that to be the case. For the English case, like I said, I've spoken directly to Dr. Martin Milton, the director, who's confirmed that it is deprecated to use "meter" and "liter" to refer to the units. There's no way I could "cite" this, however, as it's not publicly available information. They prescribe them only for those two because French is the canonical text, and they also officially publish the brochure in English. They leave it to other languages/organizations to spell them however they want in their respective languages.
 * Sure. I didn't know that tagging the talk page was a valid way to tag the article with that EngVar, so when I read through the articles, they could've been Oxford English just the same. Nevertheless, my point was primarily about the spelling of the unit names and generally that we should follow Oxford to match that of the BIPM. Getsnoopy (talk) 18:56, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There are about twice as many MDY as DMY dates in the article, so I'd say there is a clear leaning to MDY. As for the EngVar, the exclusive use of "iz" rather than "is" (yes, I know they are used in Oxford English too, but...) combined with the use of US-only spellings ("laborer", "centered" and "behavior") and the predominance of MDY dates gives a clear indication to me that this article should commonise on American English combined with MDY dates rather than any other variety. -- DeFacto (talk). 16:24, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The first date used was DMY, so according to the MOS:DATEVAR the article format should be DMY. As I mentioned before, it also makes sense from a internationalization point of view, since MDY are only used in the US. --Ita140188 (talk) 01:26, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * DATEVAR says "should" continue to be used, not "must", and in this case it wasn't. And as subsequent edits mostly used the MDY format, that, effectiveley, delivered an edit consensus in support of MDY. And DATEVAR's first clause says "If an article has evolved using predominantly one date format, this format should be used throughout the article, unless there are reasons for changing it based on strong national ties to the topic or consensus on the article's talk page." Therefore, DATEVAR supports commonising on the predominant MDY format, unless a consensus for DMY is achieved in this discussion. -- DeFacto (talk). 19:01, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Getsnoopy wrote above "the BIPM prescribes the spelling of the units in French primarily and English". I disagree. In the preface to the 9th edition of the SI brochure the BIPM states "Small spelling variations occur in the language of the English speaking countries (for instance, "metre" and "meter", "litre" and "liter"). In this respect, the English text presented here follows the ISO/IEC 80000 series Quantities and units. However, the symbols for SI units used in this brochure are the same in all languages."

I take this to mean Jc3s5h (talk) 11:08, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * the spelling conventions are limited to the brochure itself, and not intended as a general prescription about how unit names should be spelled in English
 * there are no spelling recommendations for spelled out unit names (in any language), only for the symbols of units and prefixes.
 * Like I've said above, the BIPM was about to remove that note from the brochure because they agreed that that wasn't true (i.e., spelling variation cannot occur because the official spelling is the one provided in the brochure), but then decided not to for political reasons. Getsnoopy (talk) 18:56, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Article changes
Moved here from my talkpage. -- DeFacto (talk). 20:07, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

In this edit, you [DeFacto] claim "say it as it is" and change it to "American English", which it clearly is not. If you don't think my change to "Oxford English" was warranted, then yours isn't in just the same light, and yours should be reverted as well to become neutral. Your behaviour has an air of what you do is always more authoritative than what others do, which is not only untrue, but disruptive.

Also, regarding I'm not going to unpick the very little that wasn't which you cn re-do: please stop your wholesale reverting. You're an editor; if you can't pick the changes that are relevant vs. the ones which are not, then maybe you should reconsider your role. Getsnoopy (talk) 17:53, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, say it as it is - it's closer to American English than Oxford English. And if you jumble a couple of minor, but uncontroversial changes into a long jumble of disruptive datever and Engvar changes then you shouldn't be surprised if they get reverted too. -- DeFacto (talk). 20:15, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That's clearly just your opinion, and is easily contested given the discussion happening above. And no. You even reverted changes before the ones introducing Oxford & DMY; do better. Getsnoopy (talk) 23:14, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Relevance of adding a reference how to place a recommended symbol as per article
Reference to reverted edit.--Robertiki (talk) 02:44, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

The '·' character is not that common, most don't know how it is named, and maybe neither do not know how to search about it (simply placing it in the search box does work). I think it would do no damage placing a small note about it, if anybody would like to abide to SI rules. --Robertiki (talk) 02:32, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Another editor that loves to revert without talking. Please refer to expert bias. --Robertiki (talk) 04:48, 3 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I disagree. I don't think Wikipedia is the place for how-to guides on how to input unusual characters. On a related comment, the fact that the character is not present directly in the keyboard is probably the reason why nobody actually follows the SI recommendation. --Ita140188 (talk) 09:24, 3 December 2020 (UTC)


 * You just proved me right. The missing keyboard character justifies what is a footnote and no more. I would understand opposition against content in the body of the article, but a simple footnote ? --Robertiki (talk) 14:12, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The interpunct, or center dot, is a common international symbol for multiplication. The majority of people worldwide probably recognize it as such, perhaps not so much in the US, but this not just a US publication. I agree with the consensus here that we should not markup symbols with explanations of how-to, particularly if that entails referral to a single subjectively selected technology. kbrose (talk) 14:30, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Please explain the last part of your comment. I agree that '·' is internationally known. I don't agree the assumption that a majority of people (people and educated people are not the same) worldwide recognize it as such. Expert editors (like you) can be very valuable contributors to Wikipedia, but they sometimes have a difficult time realizing that Wikipedia is a different environment from scholarly and scientific publishing. Wikipedia is more a mom's encyclopedia than a scholarly high level publication (and I am referring also to your full rollback of my yesterday edits). I also have a Ph.D., for what it's worth. --Robertiki (talk) 15:26, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The edit being complained about contained, and discused, "·". The first post in this thread uses the same character. But the article does not use "·", it uses "⋅". So it was completely appropriate that the edit was reverted. (I have not looked at the edit summary for the reversion and express no opinion about the edit summary.) My edit to this thread is the first post that makes any sense and the rest should be ignored. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:20, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You mean 0xC2B7 (mine) and 0xE28B85 (article). But to the naked eye they look the same. And anyway, my note linked to interpunct page section which explains better. If the problem is that I was too "Linux" specific, no problem, I may suggest the following generic note --Robertiki (talk) 02:14, 4 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I added a link to centred dot in the "Unit representations" section. I think this should be enough for those wondering what that symbol is or how to input it. --Ita140188 (talk) 07:17, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Resistance force
The section with the sole statement, "By definition of the units, a consumption of 1 kWh/100 km is exactly equivalent to a resistance force...", is completely out of context with no useful exposition whatsoever. I don't see how it helps the article. There are probably many equivalents that could be drawn from dimensional analysis. kbrose (talk) 14:02, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Misuse of watts per hour, again
Dondervogel 2 added a "citation needed" template to the statement that "other use of terms such as "watts per hour" are likely to be errors. The edit summary was "are you sure?". Yes, I'm sure. I've done a Google search on "watts per hour" and nearly all of the instances I find are errors.

The problem is that reliable sources usually content to using terms correctly themselves. They seldom take the trouble to point out widespread misuse of terms. So I have not been able to find a reliable source that it is a widespread error to write "watts per hour" or similar phrases when "watts" is meant.

This topic was previously discussed in Talk:Kilowatt-hour/Archive 1 in several sections. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:57, 15 August 2022 (UTC)


 * If we don't have an RS, doesn't that make the claim WP:OR? My point is that there can are other quantities with dimensions power/time, and such use would be legitimate. I would prefer to see a positive statement about the correct meaning of W/s over the unsourced claim about incorrect meanings. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 15:07, 15 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Two sources added for "watts per hour" (usually) being nonsense. --Macrakis (talk) 19:30, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Watt second should redirect here
I was just searching for the term watt second assuming the SI units would be used rather than kilo-.

I eventually figured you had this under kilowatt hour. But, I was thinking if you had a search for watt second redirect to this page, it would be a lot easier to find the article if the user is unsure of what units to search for. VoidHalo (talk) 22:45, 8 August 2023 (UTC)


 * "Watt-second" redirects to "Joule", as it should. So does "Watt second". What did you type? Jc3s5h (talk) 22:51, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

kWh is a typo
"The use of the correct symbols for SI units, and for units in general, as listed in the earlier chapters of this brochure, is mandatory. In this way ambiguities and misunderstandings in the values of quantities are avoided." -- you can't spell "kWh" for kilowatt hour, "Wb" for watt barn, "kat" for kiloannum tonne, "Gy" for gauss year, etc. This never should have had to be a discussion especially when new units and prefixes get added. 2600:4040:208F:2A00:3FA2:818A:B558:F2A4 (talk) 22:31, 9 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Try reading the archive of the talk page to see if this has been discussed before. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:57, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

W h multiples removed from disambig pages
Why are people removing W h multiples from disambig pages and hatnotes? 2600:4040:208F:2A00:D9B0:D4A:879E:D5C8 (talk) 00:48, 13 October 2023 (UTC)