Language etc.

[Weedo]

Hi

Just a question or two -

Do members prefer to see metric or imperial measurements used? I am comfortable with both but usually use metric.

Is it OK if I use scientific names as well as common names for "wild" species please. Common names are extremely variable from area to area. In Australia, a number of British / European common names are attached to different or even indigenous species.

[Green Aura]

I wouldn't worry - use either.

Common names are a problem for me - as you say different places call completely different species by the same name. Linnaean names are good everyone can find them online if they're not familiar (and listings will often tell you regional common names for any given plant too).

[diggernotdreamer]

I think most of us here understand metric and imperial, I prefer to use the botanical names for plants too, makes life easier really

[ina]

I also understand both - seeing that this country can't make up their minds which to use... For example: I work in a shop that sells, amongst other stuff, net curtains. The drop gets measured in inches - but we have to sell them in meters. Very logical, isn't it? Customers come in having measured their windows in either, so I'm constantly converting...

And I agree with the scientific names, too. At least they don't vary with location!

[John Headstrong]

I mainly use metric but for gardening I seem to use imperial. I was taught metric at school but all the teachers thought in imperial.

I am part of a large community garden/woodland project and most of the volunteers are older than me so I have had to switch over to imperial.

Much of the measurements are quite, well, 'Ish'

[Flo]

That sounds very familiar as to measurement down the allotments John.

We are also very ish about plant names with more than one version of most things but we usually manage to agree on what it is in the end. It's the incomers that do it I reckon - rural area attracts outsiders who know the proper names.

[Odsox]

I have purposely kept away from commenting on this post, but the temptation has got the better of me, and it's a wet mucky day outside.
All through my school days I was taught in feet & inches, furlongs & miles, pounds, shillings & pence, and for the first 15 years of my working life dealing first with bushels, centals (100 lb unlike the perversely named hundredweight which is 112 lb), acres, chains & rods, then later in engineering working with Whitworth, BSP, AF & BA threads, only to have the government of the day dismiss all that I had learnt and introduce overnight a completely new set of measurements.
Now I know that the metric system is easier, and had they introduced it before I started school I would have not given it a second thought, but ... I can tell within a fraction of an inch, just by looking, how long that piece of wood/metal/seedtray is but haven't a clue what it is in centimetres. I can find a 1/2" drill bit by looking at it, but if I need a 12mm one I would have to read the size engraved on the shank. Overnight that government messed up the rest of my life as the Imperial system is so ingrained in my mind that I have to carry tape measure when I go shopping to convert from mm to inches.

After the change over I was renovating our house and discovered that they had changed the size of plasterboard when I was halfway through building an extension, to an illogical metric width and imperial length.
Now that I've moved to Ireland I find that they are also just as illogical, we are most definitely a metric country as we use kilometres on signposts (unlike the British who still use miles) but in the building line we still have 1/2", 3/4" and 1" pipes and fittings which don't exactly match the UK 15mm, 21mm & 28mm and at the moment I'm looking up corrugated plastic sheeting for a greenhouse, which comes in 1829mm x 610mm or 6' x 2' coverage.

OK, rant over ... I bet you now wish you hadn't asked.

Although, I'm not going to use latin names for fruit and vegetables, I'm not going to start sowing rows of Pisum Sativum

EDIT: I almost forgot Birmingham Wire Gauge or SWG as it became, the measurement for wire and sheet metal, and one the knitters on here might be familiar with as knitting needle sizes used to be in SWG

[Green Aura]

I always wondered what the numbers meant - seemed totally unrelated to measurements. Just to add another - catheters are measured in French Gauge, whatever that is.

Sorry Syd, you'll get used to us.

[ina]

I just wish they'd been thorough - most countries, if not all, went through a conversion from whatever was before to metric, in the hope that everybody in the world would use it and make life/cooperation etc easier for all... But, of course, the UK left some of the old stuff (see above), so nobody felt obliged to actually learn the new measurements. A friend of mine (scientist) can easily work in metric - but not in her own kitchen... And because so many of the older population still think in imperial, kids also have to learn that - otherwise communication between the generations would be even more difficult. Don't think we'll ever solve this problem! :)