The future: still imperial

And I was so cued up for a rant about compulsive editing.

Got an email from an editor yesterday who is marking Time's Chariot up for design, checking it was okay to translate all the feet into metres. Discretion was promised in the case of characters from historical periods.

My reply, as I mentally sharpened my blogging quill:

Oh grief. I'd say it's not worth going to the barricades for, so if it's set-in-stone policy that all books are metric then go for it. But I would also mutter under my breath that if I said feet then I meant feet. Indeed, please keep imperial measure for any bygoners, and I'm sure you don't need to be asked not to be too literal - if I said 1000 feet, don't change it to 304.8 metres.

And yes, anything too painful will be changed back at proof stage.

But today, before I could put finger to keyboard, I hear we're sticking with good old feet anyway. Hurray!