Virginia Biemel. age 8 of Cleveland  Ohio

Why does lb stand for Pound?

An abbreviation is a short way of writing a word.. Usually it is a few letters taken from the whole word! There will be the first one or two letters and maybe the last one.. There may also be one of the Important consonant letters from the middle. That ways. an abbreviated word is not too hard to recognize. But the proper abbreviation for the pound weight is lb  And neither 1 nor b appear in the word pound.

Sometime in the distant past there was a mixup in this abbreviation. The word libra is Latin for pound. And librae is Latin for pounds. The abbreviation for pound was made up from the Latin word for pound. The 1 and b were taken from the Latin libra or libraes

The Bureau of Standards‑says it is all right to use lb for the plural of pounds. You may write it either ways You may write 1 lb. and 20 lb Or you may write 1 lb. and 20 lbs. And you do not need to put a period after this confusing abbreviation.