Need clarification on British terminology

amother

OP ↓

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 8:10 am

Hi, in a YA story set in England (I'm American) that I'm copyediting, one character mentions that she has been told not to go "within 100 feet" of another character. In legal documents and in regular speech, do the British use feet or should the character say, "within 30 meters"? (metres?)

Thank you!

amother

Mimosa

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 8:14 am

We use feet for that type of thing, we drive in miles, height is in feet, measurements can often be inches.

nicole81

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 8:26 am

My English husband says feet. It is, after all, called the English system of measurement.

amother

Indigo ↓

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 8:27 am

Most people will likely say 100 feet, but 30 metres is also british english. I think younger people are more likely to use metres, centimetres etc, whilst older people are still on inches and feet.

Elfrida ↓

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 10:21 am

I grew up on England but 100 feet sounds odd to me. My parents would often say 100 yards, but I only ever heard feet as a measure of height, not distance.

I would use either metres or yards almost interchangeably. At school I was taught the metric system, which comes most naturally for any exact measurements. For estimations, or figures of speech (like this) I would use imperial measurements, picked up from my parents.

(Don't go near him with a barge pole is also a good expression to indicate keeping ones distance!)

amother

Freesia

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 11:25 am

I’m in my 30s and British- I would use metres for specific measurements, but for a measurement such as this that no one would actually measure or need to know an even rough length I would use feet or yards. More commonly though it would be short distances and I would use yards, and I don’t actually have a clue how long a yard is- it’s more used as a figure of speech than actual measurement. Hope my ramble makes sense!

amother

Mayflower

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 11:27 am

amother OP wrote:

Totally normal to say "within 100 feet" of someone

Raisin

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 12:09 pm

yup. I grew up in the Uk and still 'think' in feet, stones etc. Although metres, kg and CM make so much more sense so I also use those.

For my body weight I use stones and lbs, for recipes grams and kg, for example.

amother

Seashell

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 12:54 pm

A yard is 36 inches:-)
The metric system ( metres, cm, mm, km) has been going for the last many years , so depends what era the story is set.
All current school children only learn in metric
Perhaps old timers still use feet (12 inches, 12cm) or yards whilst conversing or if using a figure of speech, so depending on the age of the person youre quoting in your writing it may be ok to use

amother

↑ Indigo

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 1:09 pm

Although I feel like 100 feet is quite long. I think people would be more likely to say something like I wouldn't go within 5 feet of them.
Trivial fact-5 feet is connected to the phrase wouldn't touch them with a barge pole, as that is the length of it.

↑ Elfrida

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 1:14 pm

I thought a barge pole was six feet!

ETA I've just googled it, and surprisingly enough, barge poles come in a number of different lengths. The standard seems to be ten feet, but on some waterways longer ones were necessary.

Last edited by Elfrida on Tue, Nov 07 2023, 1:18 pm; edited 1 time in total

scruffy

Tue, Nov 07 2023, 1:15 pm

Elfrida wrote:

In America, we'd say "I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole". I wonder if that expression comes from the same source.