It's interesting that if you read the AP stylebook, that article should have reported the area in hectares first, and perhaps acres parenthetically, because the metric unit was (presumably) "the primary form in which the source of a story has provided statistics".
So if you wanted to Norm, you could write to Mark Stevenson at AP and tell him he wasn't following his employer's guidelines. We should all do that when reporters use US units only in stories about, for example, NASA missions or foreign locations. From: Jeremiah MacGregor Sent: 01/24/2009 10:24 AM To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:42454] Re: An Associated Press article in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution Norman, Who in the US would know what 2500 hectares is? I don't even know what 6180 acres is. I would prefer it if they used square miles or kilos. Jerry -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Norman & Nancy Werling <[email protected]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 9:50:06 AM Subject: [USMA:42415] An Associated Press article in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution USMA list members, Spanish energy company Acciona Energia will build a wind farm in Mexico which will be the largest in Latin America. The article was written by Mark Stevenson of Associated Press. It states that the wind farm will be 6180 acres. When converted back to hectares that would have been 2500 hectares. Don't you agree that Mark Stevenson was required to convert those 2500 hectares to 6180 acres by the Associated Press, even had he wanted to report using the metric measure? Norm Werling
