A Son of the Rock

I caught Lorraine Pascale in passing on the TV a week or so ago and was pleased to hear her say “100 mill” (or whatever the volume was) when she was referring to adding in some liquid to a recipe.

Quite often when reading out or quoting a measurement others – particularly medics – will say instead, “mills” – which really grates on me.

I would have no argument if they spoke out the unit in full and said millilitres but mills is just innumerate (and illiterate.)

A unit’s abbreviation subsumes the plural – it is singular or plural depending on the measurement’s value and is always written as singular.

For instance ⁰C stands for degrees Celsius whether or not the temperature is 1⁰C (1 degree Celsius,) 25⁰C (25 degrees Celsius,) 450⁰C (450 degrees Celsius,) or even 0⁰C (0 degrees Celsius.) Note the plural in that last one. Only values of 1 or -1 have the unit pronounced in the singular when read out or written in full.

Hence 1 ml (one millilitre) but 20 ml (20 millilitres) etc.

100 ml ought to be pronounced 100 mill as Pascale did; not 100 mills.

Mills are where wheat is ground into flour, or else factories of one sort or another (but checkout the Wiki page for a full list!).