> Hail Thee,

Hail, and verily :)

> > I don't know why Americans felt the need to reduce the size of a pint (and therefore a gallon)
> > but no doubt they had a good reason.
>
> Yeah, like trying to rip off customers on a per pint basis :)
>
> But I see that I found an expert. Good ! There is one question that I have been pondering for some time now. In fact ever since I first read the myterious legend "floz" on bottles of perfume. Growing up meant I got (relatively speaking here) smarter. So nowadays I know that 1 floz is in fact 1 fluid ounce. But what the heck is that ? Why is there a need to have ounzes for fluids and (supposedly) other ounces for non fluid stuff ?

Expert? No, I just grew up using these measures more often than Napolean's metric system.

1 fluid ounce is the volume of water that weighs 1 ounce. Basically, the difference is that a fluid ounce is volume, a dry ounce is weight.

> Side issues for the really smart:
> 2) Why is "ounce" abbreviated "oz" ? (which always reminded me of The Wizard of Oz anyway)

It's because of the old apothocary's* symbol which always looked like a "3" to me, but is apparantly a lower case z. Of course, I don't know why they used that symbol, so it doesn't really answer your question. Probably something from Latin. Also, "oz" and "ounce" sound a bit alike (Not much, I know) so that might be part of the reason.

Anyway, I would like to close by saying that imperial measures rock.

winter"chains, minims, perches, kilderkins, furlongs, acres..."mute

*The word "apothocary" is so much cooler than "chemist", don't you think?