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Letter: Letters : . . .

Published 28 March 1998

From Anthony Hegedus

Anthony.Hegedus@fin.rrd.com

I remember being in a restaurant last year where an item on the menu was
described as a “227-gramme fillet steak”. Obviously the item used to be a
half-pound steak, and after a directive to “go over” to metric, somebody made a
literal translation.

This is not quite as bad as a story my father told me. Back in the 1970s, he
was trying to buy wood panelling. He asked for 50 metres and the shop assistant
kindly informed him that the product was not sold by the metre, it was sold by
the unit. He asked how long a unit was, and back came the answer: “One
metre.”

Issue no. 2127 published 28 March 1998

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