Originally Posted by
charley26
It can be confusing here in the UK:
We use Miles on road signs/directions,
Gallons and Litres for petrol, Pints for beer, but wine in in ml - but also a large or small glass!!
Yards/inches AND Meters/centimeters for material and length,
Kilograms and grams AND pounds and ounces for weighing/measuring and recipes - but use one or the other only!
Shopping = a mixture of everything!!
It is a mixed up world.
Ha, ain't that the truth! Although I think we're so used to it that the reality isn't necessarily as bad as it sounds...
We are *supposed* to be metric, but I gather the 'transition period' is lasting several decades (it started before I existed).
I'd say we're pretty firmly universal on 'miles' for roads in everyday use, but for smaller length measurements it is now tending more towards the metric (metres, centimetres, etc.). Schoolkids are taught in metric (and have been for some time), and shops are now required to sell things like fabric in metric and that is how prices are displayed, £10 per metre, for example (though you'll tend to find that if you have a middle-aged shop assistant they can be more fluent in the imperial measurements). Food prices are supposed to be in metric only now (used to be displayed in both, and you may sometimes come across this in the smaller shops but they aren't really supposed to do that now).
Recipes in British cookbooks as standard will give measurements in both metric and imperial as part of the recipe - as Charley26 says, you are simply taught to pick one 'standard' and use it throughout for that recipe (i.e. if you start off using imperial measurements then keep going with imperial for all of it - mix and match only if you wish culinary disaster!).
'Cups' is a recipe measurement I have only come across in North American cookbooks - here the imperial standard covers pounds and ounces (as well as teaspoons, etc.), but simply does not include 'cups' as a measurement at all. And the idea of there being a difference in liquid cups and dry weight cups can cause all sorts of pickles when converting if one does not realise it is a volume measurement rather than weight!
Overall I'd say that here there is a generational difference - those in their 50s & 60s plus will tend to use imperial more easily than metric, 30s to 40s probably use a mixture of both depending on what they are dealing with, 20s and younger are more comfortable with metric? I'm not really sure my age-brackets are entirely right (and there will always be exceptions), but you get the idea!