Category talk:Articles requiring unit attention

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I went through more than 20 articles today and found that (big surprise) there are some ambiguous situations regarding UOMs. Most of them fell in the area of nautical measurements (i.e. ship displacements). In sitations where a number can be converted into another, but a particular industry, association, or culture has standardized on a given system, should time be spent calculating a measurement in a "non-native" unit of measure?

One other question for the community: If a measure is given in a quote (e.g. "Joe and I walked fifteen miles before discover the road"), should a conversion to km be inserted in the quote, or should a reauest for conversion be disregarded since the speaker did not explicitly perform the conversion in the quote? Srice13 05:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

My opinion is that the metric system is essentially understood by all, whereas the legacy systems are understood locally and by a decresasing percentage of people. Therefore I would (given infinite time and patience) add conversions to all non-metric measurements. For quotes I would do it thus: "Joe and I walked fifteen miles [24 km] before discovering the road"), using editorial brackets. The only exception I can think of would be poetry, here a footnote would be better. Rich Farmbrough 10:28 23 August 2006 (GMT).