Hour minute format pluralization in a specific context

Question

Check the following screens:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bp40q2yqk4xatzc/11.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/cobof2uvk6htwv9/1.png

you can see that I'm not consistent with the hour format.

My question is that can I use the following format? Is it correct?

"1h 1min" and "2h 2min" in the outer circle screenshoot 1 or should I pluralize like "2hrs 2mins" the same as the inner circle, "1hour 1minute" and "2hour 2minute" or do you think the pluralized form is better or sime kind of other form? My question is the same for screenshoot 2.

According to this thread there is no pluralization in SI.

What do you think?

Answer 1

I'm not sure whether the question is about abbreviations or full words. If the latter, I'd go with "one hour one minute" and "two hours two minutes". If the former, well... my guess is both are correct so long as you're consistent. I'd prefer "2hr2min". You know, "abbreviation" comes from Latin brevis, i.e. "short", so - as the meaning is clear - you should go with the simpler form. Having said that, I realized I tend to use "yrs" :) Maybe it's the question of how much space you have?

Answer 2

Remember that SI unit symbols are not abbreviations. When writing with SI, "2 hours" is always "2h", and is never "2hr" or "2hrs". "2 minutes" would similarly be "2min", rather than "2m" or "2mins". That said, we are dealing with English rather than science, so those rules do not need to be strictly adhered to.

The Wikipedia page on Units of Time lists several units of time, and their common abbreviations can be seen by navigating to their pages. I think that the correct convention is to avoid pluralizing the abbreviations of units of measurement.

From a grammatical point of view, when writing the full words, you would need to say 2 hours, 2 minutes (as opposed to 2 hour, 2 minute).