[Tex/LaTex] Measurement units style typesetting guidelines for scientific writing

math-modetypography

When I write scientific content that uses measurement units I usually refers to the following guidelines for the typesetting:

Summarizing:

  • There should be a space between the numeric value and the measurements unit
  • No Italic, the symbols for units and SI prefixes are roman
  • A dot is sometimes used to separate the units symbols multiplied

But I am not sure what is the best way to transform these guidelines into LaTeX code.
So far I've been using a code like this:

3.98~\mathrm{m \cdot kg \cdot s^{-3} \cdot A^{-1}}

That leads to:

enter image description here

Is this the best way to express unit measurements in publications?

Best Answer

In my opinion the best way to typeset (SI-)units is the siunitx package by Joseph Wright. It is very elaborate and lets you customize the behaviour of the display command \SI{value}{unit} – please read the documentation…there are way to many features in this awesome package to explain everything in full detail in one post.

Your example would 'translate' to

\SI{2.98}{\meter\kilogram\per\cubic\second\per\ampere}

Simple and beautiful…

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