Image by Sean MacEntee on Flickr.com licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Most of the world uses the metric system for measuring, but the British and Americans have their own systems of measurement (just to make things complicated). These systems are called the ‘standard’ or ‘Imperial’ systems.

Let’s take a look at the names for measuring things that are used in the United States and Great Britain and see if we can makes sense of these.

Here are some different things we can measure:
height and length
weight
temperature
land and space
liquids and drinks

Height and lengths:
To measure height (like how tall you are) or to measure short distances (like how long a board is) you will use the smallest standard measurements: inches and feet. For items or distances that are longer you will need to use yards and miles.

There are 12 inches in 1 foot. (1 foot = 0.3 meters)
There are 3 feet in 1 yard. (1 yard = 0.9 meters)
There are 1760 yards in 1 mile. (1 mile = 1609 meters)

These are the most common terms used in measuring height and distances.  Here are some examples of how these terms might be used, if someone were to ask me how tall I am, I would say: “I’m 5 foot 9 inches tall.” If someone were to ask me how far I live from work I would say, “I live 7.5 miles from my work.”

Weight:
Weight in the Imperial and standard systems are measured in ounces, pounds, and tons.

There are 16 ounces in 1 pound. (1 pound = 0.45 kilos)
There are 2000 pounds in 1 US ton. (1 ton = 907 kilos)

In America it is considered rude to ask someone how much they weigh, so it isn’t very often that I would say: “I weigh 140 pounds.” to someone, but people commonly ask how much a baby weighed when s/he was born, so it is common to hear people say something like “He weighed 7 pounds 5 ounces at birth.” Large items are usually weighed in tons, for example:“Our car weighs 2 tons.”

Temperature:
You have probably at least heard of Fahrenheit as a measurement for temperature. Often thermometers have both Fahrenheit and Celsius on them. The unit of measurement for temperature (in either Fahrenheit or Celsius) is the ‘degree.’

0 degree Celsius = 32 degrees Fahrenheit

If you are talking about the weather you might say: “It was a bitter 20 degrees today.” Remember 20 degrees is cold in the Fahrenheit system.

Land and space:
The measurement for large areas of land in Britain and America is the acre.
For smaller measurements of space, including indoor spaces, the unit of measurement is the square foot, abbreviated as ‘sq ft.’

A square foot is a 1 foot x 1 foot in size.
There are 43560 sq ft in 1 acre. (1 acre = 0.404686 hectare)

It is common for people to talk about the size of their house in square feet, for example: “Our home is 10,000 sq ft.” People also talk about how big the lot of land they live on is by using the term acre, for example: “We live on 1.5 acres.”

Liquids and drinks:
Liquid are usually measured differently than items that are solid (weight is usually used to measure solid items). A lot of food items are sold as liquids, which is where you will most commonly see these measurements.

Just to make things extra tricky, the US and Great Britain use different amounts for measurements with the same names! There are ‘US pints’ and ‘Imperial pints’ for example and these two are not the same amount. Here I give the US measurements.

There are 16 fluid ounces in 1 cup. (1 cup = 0.24 liters)
There are 2 cups in 1 pint. (1 pint = 0.4 liters)
There are 2 pints in 1 quart. (1 quart = 0.94 liters)
There are 4 quarts in 1 gallon. (1 gallon = 3.7 liters)

As I mentioned before these measurements most commonly come up when talking about food and drinks. For example, you might order “a pint of beer” at the bar or buy “a gallon of milk” at the grocery store.

I hope this look into the British and American ways of measuring was helpful. If you have any questions please post them below as a comment.