: Re: Miles or Kilometers for historical fiction? I am writing a novel of historical fiction about the Second World War. It is written in the POV of several German and Russian characters but is intended

@Speyer920

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If you're looking at this from the perspective of a set of characters talking to each other, it would depend on their background. If their country used metric, then they would have metric as their instinct. If you want them to 'convert' because of the presence of an American character, for example, you can do what we Canadians sometimes end up doing which is "It's about half a meter... hang on, two and a half centimeters per inch, it's about 20 inches." From that point you could have the "metric" character providing US Customary units or Imperial, or whatever (or the reverse).

At the end of the day, you don't want to break your reader out of the story. You don't want them to feel like you're ignorant of what was used, and you don't want to make things awkward. Doing something like this, or finding another means, allows you to have the transition to "what you assume your reader is most comfortable with." However, whenever they would come across "official documents" or they would receive orders, you could keep it in the "other" system, which would also allow you to create a sense of distance and formality about those issuing the orders.

I hope that helps.

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