If you were 78.740157480315 inches tall, would you describe your height as 2m or 200cm?

15 comments

1. I would say “2 m”, but my passport would say “200 cm”. Generally, like if I was 1.80 m, I’d say either “1 and 80”, mirroring the foot+inches format of mixed units, or I would say “180 cm”, but in the end, it’s all the same and I could just as well say “18 dm”. But 2 m is an “even number”, so it’s just 2 m.

2. Poland – i would say 2m. I don’t think anyone would say 200cm – it just sounds wrong. It could however be written as 200cm

3. 6 foot 6 in the Uk. Although if pressed for metric probably 2m.

4. 2 meter. If a little shorter, you’d say 1 70 or 1 85. 1m 70 or 1m 85 is quite common too.

5. we would say 2 meters because it’s easier and faster

6. I would say 2m. But for example, when I say how tall I am, I say 180 cm.

7. 2m. Any height would typically be in meters.

   The cool part about the metric system is that, for something like 180cm you can say 1.8m (one point eight meters). Or 1m 80 [centimeters]. Both work, both are correct.

8. In Portugal cm are usually only ever used for heights and lengths below 1 m. So we never say e.g. 178 cm, it’s always 1,78 m, pronounced as “one metre and 78” or occasionally “one and 78”. So 2 m is always 2 m.

   Edit: The precision is always up to the cm. So “one metre and two” is 1.02 m, not 1.2.

9. We usually use feet and inches for human height, so I’d say someone that tall was 6 ft 6. But I’m aware of “2 metres” as being an exceptionally tall, but possible, human height, so that doesn’t sound too wrong to me. I’ve never heard someone described as “200cm.”

10. If you’re a metre tall, you’re 1 m. If you’re two metres tall, you’re 2 m. If you’re one metre and 65 centimetres tall, you’re 165 cm.

11. That’d be 2 meter.

    In Dutch the height of a person is often said as for example “one eighty” for a person that’s 1.80 meter tall. Just like we do with for example money. If a beer costs €3.20 we’d say “three twenty”.

12. 2 metres (dva metra).

    As for other heights, for me (183cm) I would say “meter 83”.

13. I don’t usually measure my height to 12 decimal places.

14. I’m one meter and eighty-three centimeters tall so I say “I’m one eighty-three” (but in Dutch, so “Een drieëntachtig”)

15. In Greek, we would read it as 2 m [1], but writing 2 m is common while 200 cm is specialised. It seems that in medical and biometric contexts writing it out in cm is preferred. Both my Cypriot ID card and my medical files use the cm notation exclusively.

    My guess: it’s easier to implement forms without decimal points.

    [1]: Because, after all, in informal spoken Greek, there’s a general tendency to replace the hundreds word with the units word + pause + rest of the number. E.g. something that costs 230 Euro can be described as costing (the Greek equivalent of) “two thirty”, if the context makes it clear that there’s no way this is actually 2.30 Euro. You can do the same with thousands, although that’s even more informal and it stands out: 2023 can be “twenty twenty-three” instead of the normal “two thousand twenty-three”.