This week, Ronnie Cohen takes issue with an example of American exceptionalism.
Continue reading “Problems with US spelling variants for writing metric”
Category: General
New Internationalist, a metric role model for the British media
Back after our summer break, Metric Views is happy to publicize a periodical that might have escaped our readers’ attention in recent years. Ronnie Cohen explains.
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Do we sacrifice consistency and clarity for the sake of convention?
We are familiar with size numbers for shoes, hats, dresses and so on. Ronnie Cohen looks at the convention for screen sizes based on inches and asks if this really makes sense.
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Does metric-only labelling require changes to package sizes?
An argument made against metric-only labelling in the US is that manufacturers would need to change packaging to rational metric sizes. Ronnie Cohen looks at the UK’s experience over the past 50 years.
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Straight bananas and the metric system – the EU legacy?
With Brexit still dominating the news, Ronnie Cohen looks at one of the biggest obstacles to completing our transition to the metric system: its perceived link to the European Union.
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A Dickensian surprise
Charles Dickens is enduringly popular for his memorable characters and his portrayal of the social evils of Victorian England. One of our regular readers, Martin Vlietstra, draws attention to an unexpected contribution he made to Britain’s long-running metrication debate.
Positions of main parties and politicians on metrication
At the beginning of the General Election campaign, Ronnie Cohen looks at the current stance of the main political parties and the position taken in the past by some of their MPs.
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Global Britain or Imperial isolation?
On 29 March, Sir Tim Barrow, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union, handed a signed six-page letter from the British Prime Minister to the President of the European Council, invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and confirming the UK’s intention to leave the EU. So where do we go from here?
Costs of supporting dual measures
Ronnie Cohen provides us with an example from his work of the additional costs that businesses face as a result of having to provide for dual measures. Imagine how much better off we might be if all such costs in the UK economy and throughout the world could be avoided.
Then there were two
We ask if it is time for supporters of so-called British weights and measures to come to terms with the fact that only two systems of weights and measures are recognised world wide, and British aka Imperial is not one of them.
