[WikiEN-l] Excessive units converstion?

Wed Nov 1 01:57:36 UTC 2006

It's definitely pedantic beyond reason; it also gives far more
importance to the unit of measurement than the actual quote warrants.
But of course I'm sure people will crawl out of the woodwork if one
implies that if someone really needs to know how large 1,000 acres is
precisely (the implication from the sentence itself is that it is
pretty large for a farm, that's all you really need to know) that they
can convert it on their own time (which Google makes pretty easy these
days).

FF

On 10/31/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just found this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Capote#In Cold Blood
>
> Apparently some time ago, someone added a metric conversion (4 km^2)
> to the term "1,000 acres" in the quoted New York Times article.
>
> That's a direct historical quote - is an in-line metric units
> conversion appropriate within the quote?
>
> It seems to me like we shouldn't be doing that.
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
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