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this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2026
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Asklemmy
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The main reason it annoys me is because a lot of English-language recipes online are written by USAmericans and therefore use imperial units that I have to convert. I've also noticed that they seem to measure everything in cups even for things where it makes no sense to use volume (flour is a common one—isn't baking supposed to be precise? Flours can have different densities, air pockets, etc). I find ounces really confusing because they can be volume or mass.
Also, imperial is not standardised, so different countries have different amounts for a cup, an ounce, a pint, etc. I guess I can check the recipe author's country and then convert to metric. But I just find it confusing. Can't we just all use the same units that are nice and easy to use together since they're powers of 10?
It's way easier to bake in ounces, IME
Metric is designed more for calculating on paper. For things using your hands like baking and carpentry, customary units are better. They're designed for that.
Yeah no they're just more confusing.
The first time I encountered a baking recipe with ounces, I looked up ounces as I didn't know what they were. Imperial units aren't taught in a lot of countries. The Wikipedia article said ounces could be mass or volume, and also had different values in different countries. So I was just very confused as to what the author meant.
Everybody knows what a ml is, what a gram is, etc. They have the same value everywhere. There's no ambiguity. What is "customary" for you is a confusing system imposed on the rest of the world who want to understand what you mean.