NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Abbreviation of Nautical Mile
From: John Kabel
Date: 2005 Jun 7, 10:58 -0400
From: John Kabel
Date: 2005 Jun 7, 10:58 -0400
An interesting question came up the other day as we were editing a course on Electronic Charting. What is the accepted abbreviation of "nautical mile"? We need a standard that can be applied across all Canadian Power and Sail Squadron courses. I did some searching and came up with the following, to start the discussion: - Bureau International des Poids et Mesures notes that there is no accepted symbol, though all agree on the distance measured (1852 metres) - neither the Canadian Metric Practice Guide nor the CSA publication International System of Units have an abbreviation in their tables - Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia) suggests that "nm" is preferred, especially in aeronautics - Canadian Hydrographic Service uses "M" in its Abbreviations - The NOAA Chart 1 (Abbreviations) lists all of "M", "Mi", "NM" and "N M" for "nautical mile(s)" - Nav Canada, the agency responsible for air traffic control in Canada, uses "NM" - Bowditch (1995) gives both "n.mi." and "NM" in Abbreviations and Acronyms So, what does the group think? What is USPS usage? What is Navy usage? Please reply either to the list or to me privately. Thanks. John Kabel London, Ontario -- Outbound e-mail is scanned for viruses. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.6.4 - Release Date: 6/6/05