information:extraction, stylistic:tone
Symbols and abbreviations

A common symbol for the year as a unit of time is "a", taken from the Latin word annus.For example, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI) supports the symbol "a" as the unit of time for a year.

In English, the abbreviations "y" or "yr" are more commonly used in non-scientific literature. In some Earth sciences branches (geology and paleontology), " kyr, myr, byr " (thousands, millions, and billions of years, respectively) and similar abbreviations are used to denote intervals of time remote from the present. In astronomy the abbreviations kyr, Myr and Gyr are in common use for kiloyears, megayears and gigayears.

The Unified Code for Units of Measure (UCUM) disambiguates the varying symbologies of ISO 1000, ISO 2955 and ANSI X3.50 by using:

In the UCUM, the symbol "a", without any qualifier, equals 1 a.The UCUM also minimizes confusion with are, a unit of area, by using the abbreviation "ar".

Since 1989, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) recognizes the symbol "a" rather than "yr" for a year, notes the different kinds of year, and recommends adopting the Julian year of 365.25 days, unless otherwise specified (IAU Style Manual).

Since 1987, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) notes "a" as the general symbol for the time unit year (IUPAP Red Book). Since 1993, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Green Book also uses the same symbol "a", notes the difference between Gregorian year and Julian year, and adopts the former (a=365.2425 days), also noted in the IUPAC Gold Book.

In 2011, the IUPAC and the International Union of Geological Sciences jointly recommended defining the "annus", with symbol "a", as the length of the tropical year in the year 2000:

This differs from the above definition of 365.25 days by about 20 parts per million. The joint document says that definitions such as the Julian year "bear an inherent, pre-programmed obsolescence because of the variability of Earth's orbital movement", but then proposes using the length of the tropical year as of 2000 AD (specified down to the millisecond), which suffers from the same problem. (The tropical year oscillates with time by more than a minute.)

The notation has proved controversial as it conflicts with an earlier convention among geoscientists to use "a" specifically for "years ago" (e.g. 1 Ma for 1 million years ago), and "y" or "yr" for a one-year time period. However, this historical practice does not comply with the NIST Guide, considering the unacceptability of mixing information concerning the physical quantity being measured (in this case, time intervals or points in time) with the units and also the unnaceptability of using abbreviations for units.Furthermore, according to the UK Metric Association (UKMA), language-independent symbols are more universally understood (UKMA Style guide).