My observation is that BBC is lacking a clear units policy but is more likely to use Imperial on domestic pages and metric on its worldwide pages. (The world is larger than the UK and US.) It is true that Anerican press completely converted the sharks to 10 foot and 20 foot in keeping with the AP Style Guide. Unlike a law, or a sports record, the metric data isn't terribly important in the story, and nobody went to silly levels of precision (at least 19' 8.22" long). Still, we try to teach the American media to leave metric stories in metric; we don't have much success, though. However, the only other forum I frequent which has discussed it (forum has nothing to do with metric) lifted the article from an Australian source, units were metres, and no one had a problem with it. BBC: If Americans are your excuse, you needn't do it for us. :)
--- On Thu, 10/29/09, Stephen Humphreys <[email protected]> wrote: From: Stephen Humphreys <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:46086] Re: The other side of the coin To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, October 29, 2009, 8:10 AM Ezra - don't forget that the BBC see's itself as global in the context of it's website - so it includes the imperial for US readers (and other countries where their is a mix of units) as well as the UK. I think the more 'telling' stories are the topics related to information from the UK or America - for example if you see today's item (on the BBC news website) about how america got it's name and it's relation to a very very old map you'll note that the map size is quoted in imperial only and - oddly - spelled out (rather than numeric plus unit). Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:24:57 +0000 From: [email protected] To: [email protected] CC: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: [USMA:46085] Re: The other side of the coin #yiv267160139 .ExternalClass p {} My pleasure, Pat. And I'm sorry I didn't catch (as you did) how the BBC text converted the metric information on Australian television to Imperial.That doesn't bode well for making the case to British government officials about converting UK road signs to metric if the BBC can't even leave metric information in its original form! I also look forward to the paleontologist's reply (which I hope is soon forthcoming :-) Ezra ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pat Naughtin" <[email protected]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 12:16:22 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: [USMA:46080] Re: The other side of the coin Dear Ezra, Thanks for both of the references you sent to us today. I probably can't help putting these two stories together and sending a comment to the palaeontologist in England. More shortly! Cheers, Pat Naughtin Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected] or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe. On 2009/10/28, at 13:37 , [email protected] wrote: And here is a new story from the UK. Note that the scientist avoids all mention of measure throughout except for once ... and then he pulls out the "inch" unit! http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8322000/8322629.stm Chat to your friends for free on selected mobiles. Learn more.
