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We too write 20:00 or 21:00 hours and say 8 or 9
o'clock. We never use the AM/PM symbols here. It is "12 noon", or " I'll
see you this afternoon at three", "Do you like to go to the pictures
at eight to-night?", all in Dutch of course. But a 2 by 4 (in fact this is a 1 by 2) would never be written as 25.4 by
50.8, but as 25 by 50 in metric.
Metric uses rounded off values, just like Imperial
does.
Adobe Acrobat is one program that uses stupid
metric values like 209.9 mm. Maybe they try to discredit the metric system by
doing so, trying to make it look stupid and cumbersome. 209.9 mm is
nonsense, in fact it is 210 mm, the width of A4 paper. Anti-metric groups
like the British Weights and Measures Association (BWMA), Inch Perfect, Freedom
2 Measure (F2M) and Americans for Customary Weights and Measures (ACWM) use
bizarre metric values like 209.9 mm which are never used in metric
countries, in their propaganda.
We call a folding wooden or iron measuring
stick a 'duimstok', in English 'inch stick', but most of them are graduated in
metric only. As long as there are no inches on an inch stick, I have no
objection against this name. I have an inch-less 'inch stick'. 'Duim' is the
Dutch word for thumb and for inch.
Han Maenen
The Netherlands
Member of USMA Metric forum
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, 2003-01-07 15:49
Subject: Re: [ISO8601] More comments from
B., Andrew
----- Original Message -----
Sent: 2003 01 07
21:00
Subject: Re: [ISO8601] More comments from B., Andrew
<snip>
> > I love 24 hour
times and I think they should be used over 12 hour times.
>
> Well, at least in the morning. That IS a joke!
> >
...
> > as far is which is preferred seperator for the from:to
time/date, I use a double
> > hyphen (--), like this:
1999-12-28--2000-01-02 or 16:00--22:00.
> >
In Taiwan and
Mainland China, this is solved by using tildes: Monday ~ Friday 08:30 ~ 14:15. There
are several fonts on my Microsoft computer where the -- double hyphen
runs together into .
<snip>
> > I know that in the UK,
24 hour times aren't used much but,
> > ...
>
> Well,
in the UK 24 hour times are very commonly written and everybody
>
understands them. Things like TV schedules and train timetables
are
> usually written in 24 hour format. On the other hand,
they're not
> spoken much so 20:00 is usually pronounced "eight
o'clock". (Bit
> like saying "two b' four" but writing 25.4mm x
50.8mm :-).
The
same situation exists in the Mandarin and Taiwanese
languages.
Write 16:00 ~ 17:00, say 4 ~ 5 PM.
(Thankfully, midday is called
twelve noon, not 12:00 PM as
Microsoft would want us to believe.)
Traditional abbreviations
and popular shortcuts may remain in use for centuries without doing any
harm to SI (the modernized metric system). Perhaps, even after all
the Canadian lumber will be cut to 120 x 240 mm modules, we can still
call them two b' fours. The dried 2x4's have
long been much smaller than 2 inches by 4 inches: more like 1.6
x 3.5 in. Yet, we stick with the simple expression.
<snip>
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