Debate in the office yesterday. Headline referred to someone falling off an 800ft cliff. I wanted it changed to metres. Because that's the preferred style. And I'm the guardian of the style book. But everyone objected.
"No one thinks in metres!" they complained.
"800ft sounds much bigger than 250 metres!" they cried.
On the first point, I would refer them to my teenage son, who has learned only metric at school. It's only legacy quirks such as pints of milk and road speed limits where imperial units mean anything to him at all.
In fact, come to think of it, I was at school in the 70s and the same applies to me. Though I was the first generation of metric schoolkids, so it would be more understandable that there was some imperial hangover.
Also, I've taught myself to think of my height in centimetres and my weight in kilograms. Just because this is the 21st century after all. And besides, Thatcher was opposed to metrication, so I'm therefore in favour of it on principle.
On the second point, I would argue that the numbers are essentially meaningless in either scale. 800 feet sounds like a very high cliff. 250 metres sounds like a very high cliff. But I have no frame of reference for exactly how high that is regardless of whether it's described in metric or imperial.
To anyone who insists on using imperial units, therefore, I would argue that unless you can provide a meaningful context for the number (ten double decker buses, half the length of Belgium etc), it really makes no difference at all whether you use one scale or the other.
I let it go in the end, because I didn't think it was worth arguing the toss, but I still think I'm right. Discuss.
I also note that a newbie asked on the Audax UK facebook page the other day why all the distances were given in kilometres...
