A Curious Conundrum of Human Feet

When I was editing my current novel, The Fourth State of Matter, I ran into an unexpected question that took me some time to think about. Throughout the story, whenever a unit of measurement was needed, I always used American measurements (feet, inches, etc...)

At first I considered switching this to a more standard unit of measurement (meters, centimeters, etc...). However, this is a science fiction story, and only one character is even human. As I was thinking about what kind of measurement they would use, I realized that if these characters were real they would use a completely different unit of measurement. One foreign to humans and to earth.

After this revelation I spent a few days trying to come up with a new unit of measurement for my characters to use, but I could not stop thinking about perspective and how non-human characters interact with the world. Not only would they have their own unit of measurement, but they would speak their own language(s) as well, something which I reference in the story. Yet, this book is written in English. In a way, the entire book could be considered a translation. So although my characters have their own unit of measurement, when translated into English the units of measurement would also be translated.

All of this is to say that in the end I decided to stick with what I wrote originally, using the American measurement system. Sometimes first instincts are the right ones, even if you haven't yet figured out why.