Mu ( / ˈ m ( j ) uː / ; uppercase Μ , lowercase μ ; Ancient Greek μῦ [mŷː] , Greek : μι or μυ—both [mi] ) is the twelfth letter of the Greek alphabet , representing the voiced bilabial nasal IPA: [m] . In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 40. Mu was derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for water, which had been simplified by the Phoenicians and named after their word for water, to become 𐤌 (mem). Letters that derive from mu include the Roman M and the Cyrillic М , though the lowercase resembles a small Latin U (u).
27-840: Groupe μ ( French for "Group μ ") is the collective pseudonym under which a group of Belgian 20th-century semioticians wrote a series of books, presenting an exposition of modern semiotics . This interdisciplinary group works out of the Center of Poetic Studies at the University of Liège , in Belgium , and was formed in 1967. Members have included Francis Édeline , Jean-Marie Klinkenberg , Jacques Dubois , Francis Pire , Hadelin Trinon and Philippe Minguet , with several other associate members. Beyond their personal research in biochemistry , cultural sociology , aesthetics , or semiotics,
54-707: A non-serious fashion , in May 2010. Ian Mills, president of the Consultative Committee on Units, considered the chances of official adoption to be remote. The prefix geop and term "geopbyte" have been used in the information technology industry to refer to 10 bytes, following "brontobyte". The ascending prefixes peta ( 1000 ) and exa ( 1000 ) are based on the Greek-derived numeric prefixes "penta" (5) and "hexa" (6). The largest prefixes zetta ( 1000 ), and yotta ( 1000 ) and, similarly,
81-520: A "real" mu is different than the micro sign. These are only to be used for mathematical text, not for text styling: Unit prefix A unit prefix is a specifier or mnemonic that is prepended to units of measurement to indicate multiples or fractions of the units. Units of various sizes are commonly formed by the use of such prefixes . The prefixes of the metric system , such as kilo and milli , represent multiplication by positive or negative powers of ten. In information technology it
108-506: A few unofficial prefixes appeared on the Internet: hepa (10 ), ento (10 ), otta (10 ), fito (10 ), nea (10 ), syto (10 ), dea (10 ), tredo (10 ), una (10 ) and revo (10 ). The Oxford professor Jeffrey K. Aronson has suggested extending beyond zetta/zepto and yotta/yocto with xenta/xenno , wekta/weko , vendeka/vendeko , and udeka/udeko , based on the idea that the "Z" and "Y" prefixes would continue backwards through
135-420: A given unit has often arisen by convenience of use and historical developments. Unit prefixes that are much larger or smaller than encountered in practice are seldom used, albeit valid combinations. In most contexts only a few, the most common, combinations are established. For example, prefixes for multiples greater than one thousand are rarely applied to the gram or metre. Some prefixes used in older versions of
162-517: A series of digital cameras called Olympus μ [mju:] (known as Olympus Stylus in North America). In phonology : In syntax : In Celtic linguistics: The lower-case mu (as "micro sign") appeared at 0xB5 in the 8-bit ISO-8859-1 encoding, from which Unicode and many other encodings inherited it. It was also at 0xE6 in the popular CP437 on the IBM PC. Unicode has declared that
189-401: A theoretical approach towards visual rhetoric and visual semiotics that involved classifying images according to their differences from plastic and iconic norms. The Traité du signe visuel (1992) (which Göran Sonesson said was to visual communication what Saussure 's Cours de linguistique générale was to linguistics) sought to elaborate a general grammar of the image, independently of
216-401: Is common to use binary prefixes , which are based on powers of two . Historically, many prefixes have been used or proposed by various sources, but only a narrow set has been recognised by standards organisations. The prefixes of the metric system precede a basic unit of measure to indicate a decadic multiple and fraction of a unit. Each prefix has a unique symbol that is prepended to
243-437: Is formed from the first syllable of the decimal prefix with the similar value, and the syllable "bi". The symbols are the decimal symbol, always capitalised, followed by the letter "i". According to these standards, kilo , mega , giga , et seq. should only be used in the decimal sense, even when referring to data storage capacities: kilobyte and megabyte denote one thousand and one million bytes respectively (consistent with
270-584: Is not used, because it appears identical to Latin M . "μ" is used as a unit prefix denoting a factor of 10 (one millionth ), in this context, the symbol's name is " micro ". "μ" is conventionally used to denote certain things; however, any Greek letter or other symbol may be used freely as a variable name. In classical physics and engineering : In particle physics : In thermodynamics : In evolutionary algorithms : In type theory : In chemistry : In biology : In pharmacology : In orbital mechanics : The Olympus Corporation manufactures
297-567: The byte . Units of information are not covered in the International System of Units. Computer professionals have historically used the same spelling, pronunciation and symbols for the binary series in the description of computer memory , although the symbol for kilo is often capitalised. For example, in citations of main memory or RAM capacity, kilobyte , megabyte and gigabyte customarily mean 1024 (2 ), 1 048 576 (2 ) and 1 073 741 824 (2 ) bytes respectively. In
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#1732791880891324-464: The metaphor , μ being the Greek initial for the term. Mu (letter) In Greek, the name of the letter was written μῦ and pronounced [mŷː] . In Modern Greek , the letter is spelled μι and pronounced [mi] . In polytonic orthography, it is written with an acute accent : μί . The lowercase letter mu (μ) is used as a special symbol in many academic fields . Uppercase mu
351-472: The 1960s dealt with linguistically oriented topics such as polysemous language , and the nature of synecdoche and metaphor . The concepts elaborated in the group's first major publication ( A General Rhetoric 1970) contributed to the revival of rhetorics at the time, by providing an explanatory model of rhetorical figures, which drew on contemporary concepts of linguistic structure. The group separated itself even further from formal structuralism with
378-518: The SI includes standardised prefixes for 10 ( peta ), 10 ( exa ), 10 ( zetta ), 10 ( yotta ), 10 ( ronna ), and 10 ( quetta ); and for 10 ( femto ), 10 ( atto ), 10 (zepto), 10 ( yocto ), 10 ( ronto ), and 10 ( quecto ). Although formerly in use, the SI disallows combining prefixes; the * microkilogram or * centimillimetre , for example, are not permitted. Prefixes corresponding to powers of one thousand are usually preferred, however, units such as
405-452: The authors have published collectively various books as well as more than sixty papers in such journals as Communications , Poétique , Versus , Visio , Degrés , Cahiers internationaux de symbolisme , Communication et langage , Era , Revue d'esthétique , Le Français moderne , Texte , Technê , Protée , RS/SI , Nouveaux actes sémiotiques , Les Documents de travail d'Urbino , etc. or in collected papers. Some of their early work in
432-450: The descending prefixes zepto ( 1000 ) and yocto ( 1000 ) are derived from Latin "septem" (7) and " octo" (8) plus the initial letters "z" and "y". The initial letters "z" and "y" appear in the largest SI prefixes. They were changed because of previously proposed ascending hepto (Greek "hepta" (7)) was already in use as a numerical prefix (implying seven) and the letter "h" as both SI-accepted non-SI unit (hour) and prefix ( hecto 10 ),
459-557: The hectopascal, centimetre, and centilitre, are widely used; outside the SI, the units hectare , decibel are also common. The unit prefixes are always considered to be part of the unit, so that, e.g., in exponentiation , 1 km means one square kilometre, not one thousand square metres, and 1 cm means one cubic centimetre, not one hundredth of a cubic metre. In general, prefixes are used with any metric unit, but may also be used with non-metric units. Some combinations, however, are more common than others. The choice of prefixes for
486-457: The metric system are no longer used. The prefixes myria- , (from the Greek μύριοι , mýrioi ), double- and demi- , denoting factors of 10 000 , 2 and 1 ⁄ 2 respectively, were parts of the original metric system adopted in France in 1795, but they were not retained when the SI prefixes were agreed internationally by the 11th CGPM conference in 1960. The prefix " myrio- "
513-647: The metric system), while terms such as kibibyte , mebibyte and gibibyte , with symbols KiB, MiB and GiB, denote 2 , 2 and 2 bytes respectively. Although some of the following unofficial prefixes appear repeated on the internet, no one is in actual use. A metric prefix myria (abbreviation "my"), for 10,000, was deprecated in 1960. Before the adoption of ronna and quetta for 10 and 10 and ronto and quecto for 10 and 10 in November 2022, many personal, and sometimes facetious, proposals for additional metric prefixes were formulated. The prefix bronto , as used in
540-442: The publication of A Rhetoric of Poetry (1977), which showed that, although the presence of certain linguistic structures – and foremost amongst them poly- isotopy , made possible by rhetorical figures – was a necessary condition for the production of poetic effects, this condition was not enough, and that anthropological and social criteria would be needed to complete these structures. In the 1970s and 1980s they worked on developing
567-704: The same applied to "s" from previously proposed descending septo (i.e. SI unit "s", seconds), while "o" for octo was problematic since a symbol "o" could be confused with zero. Before the adoption of new prefixes in 2022, several personal proposals had been made for extending the series of prefixes, with ascending terms such as xenna , weka , vendeka (from Greek "ennea" (9), "deka" (10), "endeka" (11)) and descending terms such as xono , weco , vundo (from Latin "novem"/"nona" (9), "decem" (10), "undecim" (11)). Using Greek for ascending and Latin for descending would be consistent with established prefixes such as deca , hecto , kilo vs. deci , centi , milli . In 2001,
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#1732791880891594-576: The seller. (see Orin Safier v. Western Digital Corporation and Cho v. Seagate Technology (US) Holdings, Inc. ). To protect themselves, some sellers write out the full term as " 1 000 000 ". With the aim of avoiding ambiguity the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) adopted new binary prefixes in 1998 ( IEC 80000-13:2008 formerly subclauses 3.8 and 3.9 of IEC 60027-2:2005 ). Each binary prefix
621-419: The specifications of hard disk drive capacities and network transmission bit rates , decimal prefixes are used. For example, a 500-gigabyte hard drive holds 500 billion bytes, and a 100-megabit-per-second Ethernet connection transfers data at 100 million bits per second. The ambiguity has led to some confusion and even lawsuits from purchasers who were expecting 2 or 2 and considered themselves shortchanged by
648-484: The term "brontobyte", has been used to represent anything from 10 to 10 bytes, most often 10 . In 2010, an online petition sought to establish hella- as the SI prefix for 10 , a movement that began on the campus of UC Davis . The prefix, which has since appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle , Daily Telegraph , Wired and some other scientific magazines, was recognised by Google , in
675-427: The type of corpus being considered. This semiotic of the visual contributed, in its turn, to semiotics in general: indeed, a question encountered by the group at this stage was that of the relationship between sensorial experience and signification, a question which certainly reveals something of this degree of generality since it comes up against the question of the origin of meaning itself. The group took its name from
702-477: The unit symbol. Some of the prefixes date back to the introduction of the metric system in the 1790s, but new prefixes have been added, and some have been revised. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures has standardised twenty metric prefixes in resolutions dating from 1960 to 1991 for use with the International System of Units (SI). In addition to those listed in the everyday-use table,
729-410: Was an alternative spelling variant for " myria- ", as proposed by Thomas Young . A binary prefix indicates multiplication by a power of two. The tenth power of 2 (2 ) has the value 1024 , which is close to 1000 . This has prompted the use of the metric prefixes kilo , mega , and giga to also denote the powers of 1024 which is common in information technology with the unit of digital information,
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