As an American, I believe the time has come – indeed, it’s been here for two centuries – for the U.S. to convert to the Metric System and Celsius. I’ve been trying to force myself to use those systems in my daily life, because The Buddha said to be the change you want to see.
But I’m concerned? Do I sound like a pretentious twit when I say that St. Louis is a 175-kilometer drive? Or when I say it’s about 27 degrees outside when it’s the 1st of August? Or when I say, “the 1st of August” rather than “August 1st”?
Depends on the context. Most scientific contexts it’s fine. I make coffee and bread at home and in those contexts, grams are commonly used. “Two liter” is a standard volume for soda pop across the country. In the Army, “clicks”, aka kilometers, was a standard unit of marching distance as well as navigation. At work we cast metal and use Celsius to measure the temperature of the molten metal.
But casually mentioning kilometer distances and Celsius temperatures outside of those contexts by an American, to other Americans who you know don’t use those units regularly, would sound like an odd affectation to my ears. Pretentious? Maybe. It’s a minor sin. I wouldn’t think less of you or anything but I’d think it was odd.
You sound bad when you say St. Louis is 110 miles, too. The standard driving distance measure is hours.
And certain metric measurements are fine in casual context, like centimeter. But going out of your way to do it is weird. And you’ll take Fahrenheit from my cold, dead hands.
