"John Hall" wrote in message
.. .
In message , Chris Hogg
writes
It really irritates me when text written with imperial units has then been
metricated, and says things like 'the two points were roughly a yard
(0.914 metres) apart', or 'we had to drive about a mile (1.609 kilometres)
further'. If it's approximately an imperial unit then give an approximate
metric unit, not an exact conversion, FFS!

It annoys me too. The Telegraph, which seems to think that its readers
can't cope with degrees Celsius, is a frequent offender. You often see
things like "forecasters said that temperatures could fall as low as 17.6F
(-8C)".

The other thing that frustrates me is that newspapers (especially
broadsheets like The Times and Telegraph) seem not to have a % symbol in
their font. There are lots of references to "a growth of 7 pc" rather than
"a growth of 7%".

"Davey" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 09:21:30 +0100
Indy Jess John wrote:

So while everybody was repricing things in pounds and "new pence", he
didn't bother and left prices in his window in the format £5/18/-.
If the gossip in the local pub was true the jeweller had a year to go
before retirement and wasn't going to mess around with this
new-fangled money.

An old-school engineer I worked with described the process as
'metrifuction'. (Spelling optional).

I'm very much in favour of metrification of all measurement units to make
calculation easy - I can do base 10 but base 12, 14, 16, 20 etc for all the
various imperial units is unnecessary complication.

It's a shame the metric wasn't pushed harder when schools started to
introduce it in the 60s and 70s. I'm old enough (early 50s) that I learned
imperial as "folk units" for estimating and in common parlance but would
ALWAYS measure anything in metric units for ease of calculation, but I wish
I'd just learned metric units. I'll have to talk to my teenaged nephews and
find out what units they generally use in common parlance (as opposed to
measuring things with a ruler or with scales) - do they know their height
and weight better in feet/inches or cm, and in stones/lb or kg, I wonder?
Distances when driving are a different matter because road signs and speed
limit signs are only in miles and miles/hour, and car odometers are only in
miles, so that is what you tend to get to know.

At least in the UK we tend to use the largest unit available, whereas in the
US they often use large numbers of a smaller unit: they measure weight in lb
rather than stones/lb, and distances along roads in feet rather than yards -
and a sign saying "roadworks 5500 feet" is much more difficult to interpret
than "roadworks 1 mile" (OK, I know there are 5280 feet in a mile, but I'm
rounding).

In article , NY
wrote:
"John Hall" wrote in message
.. .
In message , Chris Hogg
writes
It really irritates me when text written with imperial units has then
been metricated, and says things like 'the two points were roughly a
yard (0.914 metres) apart', or 'we had to drive about a mile (1.609
kilometres) further'. If it's approximately an imperial unit then give
an approximate metric unit, not an exact conversion, FFS!

It annoys me too. The Telegraph, which seems to think that its readers
can't cope with degrees Celsius, is a frequent offender. You often see
things like "forecasters said that temperatures could fall as low as
17.6F (-8C)".

The other thing that frustrates me is that newspapers (especially
broadsheets like The Times and Telegraph) seem not to have a % symbol in
their font. There are lots of references to "a growth of 7 pc" rather
than "a growth of 7%".

and yeterday's Evening Standard which said that Greece had raised VAT by
10%.

From 14& to 24% - that's actually a rise of 59% which puts prices up by 9%.

Charles Hope wrote:

and yeterday's Evening Standard which said that Greece had raised VAT by
10%.

From 14& to 24% - that's actually a rise of 59% which puts prices up by 9%.

So, what they should have said was "..raised by 10 percentage
points." But again, how many would understand the difference?

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK


Plant amazing Acers.

"brightside S9" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 11:50:34 +0100, "NY" wrote:
The other thing that frustrates me is that newspapers (especially
broadsheets like The Times and Telegraph)
--------------------------^^^^^

The Times hasn't been a broadsheet for years.

I *knew* I should have qualified what I wrote! I know The Times isn't a
broadsheet in terms of paper size. I was using the term rather loosely to
refer to the so-called "quality" newspapers like the Times, Telegraph,
Guardian and Independent, to distinguish from tabloid papers like The Sun,
the Mail, the Star, the Express etc.

On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 11:50:34 +0100, "NY" wrote:

The other thing that frustrates me is that newspapers (especially
broadsheets like The Times and Telegraph) seem not to have a % symbol in
their font. There are lots of references to "a growth of 7 pc" rather than
"a growth of 7%".

Perhaps they've seen other people using internet-proof constructions
such as "ukp" or "gbp" for pound signs, and think it's necessary to do
this kind of thing with all non-text symbols, rather than just the
non-ASCII ones (if they even know what ASCII is).

Rod.

On 21/07/15 11:35, Davey wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 11:31:03 +0100
Charles Hope wrote:

In article ,
Paul Cummins wrote:
In article ,
(Chris Hogg) wrote:

It really irritates me when text written with imperial units has
then been metricated, and says things like 'the two points were
roughly a yard (0.914 metres) apart', or 'we had to drive about a
mile (1.609 kilometres) further'. If it's approximately an
imperial unit then give an approximate metric unit, not an exact
conversion,

I'm of a generation that grew up with Metric in the schoolroom and
Imperial in the home. This included money - my parents would still
think of things in terms of shillings and blame inflation on the
Decimal system. Even now my mother states that in 1971, Unleaded
petrol was only a couple of shillings a gallon,

Well, she is wrong. Even in 1965 (when I bought my Anglia Estate) it
was 4/11 a gallon, if you were lucky. A couple of shillings a gallon
was back in the 40s.


Yup. When I was driving my 3-wheeler, which defines the year as 1966-67,
two gallons of petrol (a tankful) cost 10 bob, with thruppence change.
That was at a Jet station, cheaper than others locally.
Any concept of two-shilling per gallon petrol in 1971 is a non-starter.
Unleaded? 1, 2, 3 or 4-Star, maybe.

https://www.theaa.com/public_affairs...te_gallons.pdf

--

Jeff

On Tuesday, July 21, 2015 at 9:18:28 AM UTC+1, Paul Cummins wrote:
In article ,
(Chris Hogg) wrote:

It really irritates me when text written with imperial units has then
been metricated, and says things like 'the two points were roughly a
yard (0.914 metres) apart', or 'we had to drive about a mile (1.609
kilometres) further'. If it's approximately an imperial unit then
give an approximate metric unit, not an exact conversion,

I'm of a generation that grew up with Metric in the schoolroom and
Imperial in the home. This included money - my parents would still think
of things in terms of shillings and blame inflation on the Decimal system.
Even now my mother states that in 1971, Unleaded petrol was only a couple
of shillings a gallon, and diesel was tuppence ha'penny cheaper... until
I point out that Unleaded was only introduced in the 1980's, and Diesel
didn't make it to the common people much earlier.

Anyway, this means that if I am thrown a figure in one system I can
normally convert in my head to a reasonable approximation of the other in
real time. I am sure this is not unique - but have the younger (35)
generation not learned both?

I had a Mini in 1965 and petrol (called regular or premium then) was 4/11 a gallon, plus a shot of Redex for 1d. Four gallons and four shots of Redex cost me a quid.



--
Paul Cummins - Always a NetHead
Wasting Bandwidth since 1981
Please Help us dispose of unwanted virtual currency:
Bitcoin: 1LzAJBqzoaEudhsZ14W7YrdYSmLZ5m1seZ

On Tuesday, July 21, 2015 at 12:36:29 AM UTC+1, Davey wrote:
There is one of those 'Destroyed in Seconds' programmes on Quest right
now. The first item I saw showed a dragster crash. The subtitles gave
distances, speeds etc in Imperial units, but the commentary used metric
units. Most confusing.

Soon after Canada changed to metric, I was at the Hope Slide, a place
in British Columbia where some years before there had been a terrible
landslide. There was a descriptive board, with all distances quoted in
Imperial units. But the Metricators had come along, and made a small
block of wood to fit over each written measurement, with the new metric
values instead.
'Amateurish' only begins to describe the effect.

For everyone's education:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Slide

http://www.penmachine.com/photoessay...hopeslide.html

--
Davey.

I never understood why the UK went for a half-arsed system of metricating everything except distances. If OZ, NZ Canada and Ireland can do it why not the UK. I understand that road signs would need changing and that costs money but it will need to happen at some point as the UK population adapts to metric units, so why delay?

Are kids still taught miles as well as Km in schools, I wonder?

MR

On Tuesday, July 21, 2015 at 12:36:29 AM UTC+1, Davey wrote:
There is one of those 'Destroyed in Seconds' programmes on Quest right
now. The first item I saw showed a dragster crash. The subtitles gave
distances, speeds etc in Imperial units, but the commentary used metric
units. Most confusing.

Soon after Canada changed to metric, I was at the Hope Slide, a place
in British Columbia where some years before there had been a terrible
landslide. There was a descriptive board, with all distances quoted in
Imperial units. But the Metricators had come along, and made a small
block of wood to fit over each written measurement, with the new metric
values instead.
'Amateurish' only begins to describe the effect.

For everyone's education:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Slide

http://www.penmachine.com/photoessay...hopeslide.html

--
Davey.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider for an example of what can happen when countries change to metric. Fortunately no one died.

MR