Sorry to disagree. The rest of the world uses metre and litre so the
US should just follow. There are enough issues without changing the
words as well..... It's going to be a hard battle anyway, you might as
well go for the whole hog.
Anthony.
On 04 Feb 2013 at 19:31:27, mechtly, eugene a wrote:
> I advocate the phonetic American English spelling "meter" for continental USA.
>
> When traveling in French speaking regions, I attempt to pronounce meter as
> "me-tre."
>
> The attempt to distinguish the unit name "meter" from the name of an
> instrument "meter" by spelling reforms is without necessary justification in
> my opinion. The spellings meter and meter are not a "reversion" but are
> continuity of well established and correct practice in the USA. Combining
> attempted spelling reforms with efforts to metricate the USA create only
> hostility to all metric units of measurement, not just to the SI unit of
> length, the meter.
>
> Eugene Mechtly
>
> ________________________________________
> From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of
> [email protected] [[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, February 04, 2013 12:48 PM
> To: U.S. Metric Association
> Subject: [USMA:52312] Spelling of "Metre"
>
> Carleton is correct in stating that there are those regional spelling
> preferences -- in general. At one time the U.S. Metric Association made
> what I thought was a useful distinction: "metre" is the measurement,
> "meter" is the measuring instrument.
>
> Since making that distinction more than a decade ago, the USMA seems to
> have reverted to the "meter" spelling for both, following the standard of
> U.S. Government publications. Perhaps the USMA thought that the "metre"
> spelling was too "exotic" for the U.S.
>
> As someone who thinks that distinctions are good to keep in language, I
> prefer the USMA's original position distinguishing between the measurement
> and the measuring instrument by a difference in the spelling.
>
> ============
> On Sun, 3 Feb 2013, Carleton MacDonald wrote:
>
> > With regard to spelling, sorry, both are right. In the USA it's meter,
> > theater, center. In Canada and the UK it's metre, theatre, centre.
> > It's a regionalism, NOT an error.
>
