Standard v. Metric

Any scifi publisher who balked at metric would deserve being blacklisted. No WAY will we be using standard when spacefaring.

I figure vernacular such as 'inched forward' would stay in the language for a long time, I'd have no qualms about continuing that usage. I could see children asking parents, "daddy, what does 'inch' mean?"

Interesting to me is how long some of the metric words are, and my sense that human language being what it is, we would shorten those considerably.

In my fics, I've done these 'shortens':

Centigrade or Celsius to "Cee" (kind of a no-brainer)
kilometers and kilometers per hour to "klicks" (that one is already in use)
centimeters to "cents" (feel like I made that one up, but it makes sense, so it wouldn't surprise me to hear it's already in use).
Also "kilos", of course, for kilograms.

Be interested to hear how others handle this.

I thought a "klick" was a separate unit entirely from the Kilometer. It is a Nautical mile. Per hour is a knot, I think.

I'd say the space-farers would use the Metric system, or for arbitrary reasons they can use alien measurements like the Yalcrab of planet Tralfamador if you like. Of course, metric would be much more familiar to the reader.

One of my main characters is a 10,000 year old war-god in the employ of a very powerful corporation of elder gods. It also happens that he's from contemporary Earth, so he defaults to thinking in standard Imperial units despite them having their own unit standards.

Another character A Few Centuries From Now lives in a world that's an extension of the present, with most of the solar system colonized. She thinks in metric.

It's all about what fits the character and the situation. If you're writing a story in Victorian England, you wouldn't use metric. If you're writing a story about a space program, you're not going to see anything official written in Imperial units. But at the same time an American character or older non-American character might still use those.

There's no hard rule, in other words.

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Dennis,

no, klick is a kilometer. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klick, brought into use during the Vietnam War.

A nautical mile is an angular measurement of latitude (minute, I think) projected up onto the surface of earth. Close to a mile.

Yeah, feel free to go ahead with the language. As Ocotillo said, this stuff will stick around in language for a really long time. There are plenty of sayings in language that originated thousands of years ago and are still around in some form today - as long as it keeps being used in the language, people will know the general meaning even if they don't know where that meaning originated.

And you can see that happening even today - sayings like "inched forward" are used in English-speaking metric-using countries (here in Australia, at least). "Inching" forward definitely rolls off the tongue better than "centimetring" forward. :) Even for younger generations who've used metric all their life, this language is fine, and we'll occasionally use terms like inches and feet to describe rough distances (although not with as much precision as someone who's more used to the imperial system).

Language is a tricky thing. Some stuff may not survive a generation, let alone hundreds of years; other things may appear suddenly and seem like they've been around forever (for example, "okay" was not around 200 years ago, which is hard to believe given its prevalence now).

I stick to metric only for anything I write set any reasonable amount of time in the future. I figure that anything I can do to get my readers thinking in metrics instead of imperial units would be a service to humanity.

-ilya

Where did you summon the word "Yalcrab" from? it instantly stood out to me, and then i realised.... it's my last name backwards!

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I think I've abandoned English for SI units. And I've also abandoned Earth measurements for more astronomically compatible units: parsecs, AU, and αU (the latter two get confused a lot at first). An Alpha Unit (αU) is the distance between Sol and Alpha Centauri.

Would you believe that my physics teacher has the same last name and uses it on his tests?

I could never spell MY name backwards to create an alien unit. But strangely enough, I have been granted a mixed blessing that my name corresponds with a number; a numerical amount. That's a little funny.

I cant remember the last Sci Fi book I read that wasnt using metric measurements. But for essential cultural reasons, my bunnies will probably be sticking with "feet" for measurements.

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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For my own world, it's a bit weird, since I am from Australia (metric), am in the US (standard? What's so standard about ounces and pounds? ;) ), am envisioning an American reader, but the world is a secondary world where I would expect metric units, or something else. So far I've mostly avoided it, but I'll probably come down on feet and inches, to be changed later if need be.

Speaking as someone who grew up with metric - 'inched' and similar terms are used all the time, it's just colloquial language. There are lots of legacy terms like that, for example references to pennies when an Aussie calls it a "cent" and never a penny. Also you're writing for your audience to read, not for someone in your world to read, so it seems forgivable to use terms that your reader would be familiar with.

As for abbreviations:
Celsius/Centigrade - in my experience we just said '25 degrees' unless it was on a weather forecast.
Kilometers - we would just say '50 Ks' (kays), as in the K in Km. Klicks is military I think.
Centimeters - this doesn't really get shortened. Australians tend to soften the Ts so we can say it quicker. When fine measurements are commonly used, such as in manufacturing settings, the abbreviation is often 'mils', for either millimeters or milliliters.
And kilos is as you say for kilograms.

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Yeah I definitely went metric system and centigrade. My novel's set in a post-apocalyptic era when the Earth is a no-go zone and humans are scattered throughout the solar system. The other issue is time, since days and years are different on different planets, how is time measured. I figured hours would stick around because on Mars, the first place humans would settle outside of the Earth-Moon system, has 24+ Earth hours so an hour would be almost the same length. I keep terms like "decades" because I think it's sufficiently long enough that irrespective of how long a year is "decades" is like generations, another word I've come to use to mark passage of time. For human age, I've gone to using adolescents, young adults, older, etc, and avoid "years." I figure by 20,000 words I'll have to get around to explaining some sort of formalized calendar system, but for now I'm jumping around from place to place to get good looks at different ways humans have settled on planets, moons and asteroids. Another thing I've learned: you have to terraform Mars, because you need at least one planet that's wide open, and with your Earth X'd out Mars is your best bet.

i would believe it, it's not quite a rare name.

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I love the fact that American's call it "Standard". I've never heard it refered that way. It's so Standard that most of the world uses Metric. I can't think of another country off the top of my head that still uses Imperial measurements except the U.S.

having said that, Canada only did the switch over in the late 70's (I believe) During Trudeau's reign as PM. And we're still feeling the effects of it to this day. Even though we're supposed to be Metric, Imperialism dies hard, if you go to any construction site, they will be using Imperial measurements. When I took woodworking in Highschool, we were taught using Imperial Measurements, my teacher more or less said f**k metric. He told us that imperial measurements will stick around in the trades for a very very long time, so he may as well teach us that way.

What drives me nuts, is at the grocery store, they'll advertise produce as so much $ for a lb. Yet all the scales to weigh the food is in metric. They don't want to advertise it in metric, because it will either a) confuse people (yea right, thats an excuse), or because it will look like it costs more for less. I think it's a tricky marketing scheme where they can use two different measurements to confuse people on how much they're actually buying.

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

2009-Brother Monkey, Brother Lion, Sister Crow
2009 -Bunnystar Galactica Psychic Bunnies IN SPACE

Thanks. I do height of characters in centimeters... I defaulted to Earth Hours too. (I have an abbreviation). And mentions of other time systems which aren't as standard...

Will the US stop using a backwards measuring system if they get knocked down in this economic crisis to number two. Maybe. The biggest excuse--the car industry is in the tubes.

I use a converter to convert the measurements over.

Novelists are a conscienceless lot.--Diana Gabaldon (An Echo in the Bone)

Speaking as a metric user myself, one still says "inched forward" or "a miss is as good as a mile" (in one of Asimov's far far future stories, he had the characters use the phrase and then wonder what on earth a mile was), even when measurements are in centimetres and one has no idea (for example) how many inches there are in a foot.

For some reason, phrases like "centimetred forward" just don't seem to have caught on.

In the UK it's all deeply confused. since the 70's/80's, kids have been taught metric. All the road signs are in miles. There's an ongoing tussle over weights and measures.

Anyway, my Nano is set in an Ancient Greek-speaking alternate history, using ancient measurements: feet are around, but so are fingers, stadia, cups, and obols (the latter also formed part of Greek currency).

Obviously, nobody knows what these are, so instead of describing things by their measurements, I have to go for comparisons and better visual descriptions. It's forcing me to express myself better, which can only be a good thing. ("The alien macguffin was ten point three kilometers wide" versus "The outworlders' artefact was as wide as a small city"; that sort of thing.)

Worth a try?

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It worked for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Harry Turtledove's Crosstime series, so go for it. I use metric in some of my stories, depending on what kind of image I want to create.

And things like "inch forward" would probably still be in use. In Japan, they use metric, but old units are still recognized--for example, they still know what a "sun" is (3/4"), so they understand the title "Issun-boshi" ("The Inch-High Samurai"). The origin of the word "inch" might be forgotten, but it would live on as a verb.

2007: Brainiac High (35K, unfinished)
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Hey, now, you terracentric being! All of those are earth-based units. Indeed, 2 AU = Parsec * sin(0°0'1") .

I bet you talk about inalienable human rights, too. ;-) }: )

All measurements are scaled for convenience. I avoid the topic in my novel; where I need to describe the size of things, I say Wolf Height or Tail Length, which my characters shorten to wolves or tails. "All right all you space cadet recruits! Stand in a row, one tail apart." The meaning is clear, and I'm not gonna subject my reader to tedious calculations. But my daytime reckoning I will let you figure out. Wake up at 19. Breakfast is at 0, lunch is at 5, dinner is at 10, go bed at 12. Simple enough.

In Australia, we use metric measurements ... but still use "Inched forward"

there are other expressions like Mileage, pound of flesh, the mad mile still in use

In outer space, they may also use a metric system for time. In Star Trek, they have a weird star date and count in parsecs

Despite being Canadian I'm using standard.

Having characters who live in New England and the central states using centimetres and kilometres just didn't feel natural. So it's inches and miles.

I suppose I can always convert my measurements to metric later...

Originally, I was going to do entirely original measurment systems, including shadow-walks and other random terms, but my world already introduces a new environment, and since I did decide they were originally from Earth, and since shadowwalks would not make sense underground in the caves (it would only work for the surface civilization) - I opted to go for inches and miles.

Being an american, and knowing how conceiting we americans are, I can always say my colonists were from America and stick to what I am used to.

I do like metric mesaurements of distance, but I don't like metric measurements of liquid mass and I really hate measuring things in Celsius :P Can I measure temperatures in Kelvin and weights in standard and distances in metric without my readers shooting me? ;) Maybe my colonists were really confused...er..... :P

All metric.
I'm an American science teacher. I speak the language.

-F5iver Out

Didn't Nasa crash a Mar's probe by confusing Metric and Imperial (Standard = Imperial, but I can see why you changed the name :~)

I think in pounds, miles, and pints, but a kilo is 2.2 pounds, a klick is (bit complicated this) 100 kilometers is roughly 62 miles. Pints (no idea, but i think) it's 2 pints or thereabouts to the litre.

I am British BTW and in my mid forties. Metric is massivly more logical than imperial, but my brain refuses to see that. I have to work everything out by guesstimation (if i need accuracy i have to look it up) So, a 6'2" man is about 190 cms

Oh and i think of weight in stones too. so my weight in kilos is 14 stone (or thereabouts) 14X14 = 196lbs, 196/2.2 = say 90 kilos. Isn't that a fun way to spend a few minutes. :~)

They'll use metric in the future. No way they are going to stick with imperial. Not a chance in hell.

and metric can go all the way down to nanometres too (I don't think there is an equivilent for inches 1/1 000 000th of an inch maybe -- try sticking that in your calculater)

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My vote is to use metric for anything technical, but keep idioms as-is unless you want to make a specific point regarding linguistic change. Remember that even if your novel is set in the 25th or 40th century or beyond, it is going to be translated into idiomatic contemporary 21st century English.