[dfc]

This is interesting, can you give some examples of unit omission? As an american I am having trouble thinking outside of my environment. I know I am guilty of temperature unit omission: "It was 10 degrees outside /The high is going to be 60 tommorow." I am having trouble coming up with others. I am having the most trouble with gallons and or miles:

I was running on fumes, it took 3 to fill my car up.

My friends new truck is super efficient for a pickup it gets 35 / 35 miles / 35 to the gallon.

I ran for 3 yesterday.

Buffalo is 120 from Syracuse.

[leephillips]

Apparently the problem is that you just say "three gallons" and not "three U.S. gallons". But I'm pretty sure the miles are the same. Except that there are nautical, international, statute, and probably some other miles. So stop being so inconsiderate.

[Jedd]

dfc - you're right, I think, that it's almost always ambiguous temperature references, doubtless because the 'degree' part of the unit name is shared between the three common measures.

As rgarrett88 points out, short distances are often reduced to foot and inch numbers, with the receiver left to intuit context. Sometimes people will assert they hit a hundred, or went from zero to a hundred in x seconds, and weight-lifters are likely to talk about the number they can push ... again reliant upon sender and receiver sharing the same cultural background.

My comment about 'us' being so considerate was somewhat tongue in cheek, natch, though (since I'm speaking for all the rest of us now) we'd really like it if you guys would switch over to metric at your earliest convenience. I won't say ISO / SI, as working in K is just too unwieldy :)

[dfc]

I like to think our rejection of the metric system is because we are standing on principle and reject the semantic inconsistency that is the kilogram. Base measures should not be prefixed;)

[Jedd]

Cling onto that raft! I fear it's a combination of NIH (despite the same being said of imperial, Fahrenheit, etc), fear of change, and irrational dislike of the French. Of course, Daniel Fahrenheit was Dutch/German, and Anders Celsius was Swedish.

But if you think kg is frustrating, I'm learning electronics now - every book, when starting to talk about capacitors, says something like 'However, the Farad is not a convenient unit, and you'll most be working with 0.0000000001F capacitors'. Yes, the SI unit is unhindered by a prefix, but you can't but help wish they'd thought more carefully about this before writing it down.

[ftwinnovations]

36-24-36? Ha ha, only if she's 5 3.

-Sir Mix-a-Lot

[twic]

I was doing 70 on the road out of Wallingford, and the police pulled me over.

[ajanuary]

I'm pretty sure I've heard phrases like 35 to the gallon before.

[rgarrett88]

"She's five eight"

[ghshephard]

Along that vein, "She's 36-24-36"