[USMA:35392] Re: At the shoe store

[Pat Naughtin]

Title: Re: [USMA:35388] At the shoe store

On 12/12/05 12:28 PM, "Pierre Abbat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The bottom of the box has a chart, according to which Japanese 260
> corresponds to 27.5 cm. Any idea why the offset?

Dear Pierre,

This looks like a typical offset to allow for the difference between the length of your foot and the internal length of the shoe. There has to be an allowance here for some 'wriggle room' (to use a technical term) to allow for socks.

Probably the best way of describing shoe sizes is with the Mondopoint system. This uses foot length in millimetres and foot width in millimetres, both of which are rounded to the next highest 0 or 5 ending, and in your case this would be written as 'Mondopoint 260/95'. The shoes are made to fit a foot of this size and there is no particular need to also specify the inner length of the shoe.

Recently, I helped a Hungarian company with a purchase of footwear from Brasil. They encountered this same difference that you noted, except that in that case, the length difference was 20 millimetres.

For a comparison between old pre-metric sizes and Mondopoint go to: http://www.i18nguy.com/l10n/shoes.html

Cheers,

Pat Naughtin
Geelong, Australia
http://metricationmatters.com