SI base unit units are written in lowercase, except the symbols of those named after a person, which are written with an initial capital letter. For example, the "metre" (US English: "meter") has the symbol m, but the "kelvin" has symbol K, because it is named after Lord Kelvin and the "ampere" with symbol A is named after André-Marie Ampère. Several other units, such as the litre (US English: "liter"), are formally not part of the SI, but are accepted for use with SI. New definitions of the base units were approved on 16 November 2018, to take effect 20 May 2019. The
2019 redefinition of SI base units effect of redefining the SI base units, though the definitions of the SI derived units in terms of the base units remain the same. Following the CCU proposal, the text of the definitions of all the base units was either refined or rewritten changing the emphasis from explicit-unit to explicit-constant type definitions. Explicit-unit type definitions define a unit in terms of a specific example of that unit – for example in 1324 Edward II defined the inch as being the length of three barleycorns and since 1889 the kilogram has been defined as being the mass of the International Prototype