Steve wrote:
What is the recognised written short-hand notation for '(100 millimetres) squared' and '100 square millimetres' ?
100mm^2 or 100 square millimetres means a square of side 10mm. 100 millimetre square means a square of side 100mm or 10,000 square millimetres.
It can a source of confusion and the fact that the original question gets the units for resistivity wrong makes you doubt anything they say.
But there was a rule of thumb - 1.5 amps/mm^2 for ally or 2.5 amps/mm^2 for copper - which suggests that 100 mm^2 is correct.
100mm square is a big expensive cable. Another obvious rule of thumb is that the cost of the lost power should not exceed the cost of servicing the debt incurred to buy and string the cable.