It avoids any ambiguity -- the 5% of the planet still struggling with imperial measurements can continue to confound each other with ton, while the rest of us can confidently talk amongst ourselves about thousand-kg units (tonnes).
My first language is not English and I am using metric, and to me using metric ton or metric tonne removes ambiguity. I know Americans have a ton that is different from a normal ton, but have no idea about how much it is, and it is not used often enough for me to even consider it exist. I would assume 5 tonnes if it was written as 5 ton, 5 metric tons, 5 tonnes or 5 metric tonnes
I recently saw (online) a North American try to use a date format of:
yyyy-dd-mm .... I don't know why, but it was done in earnest, and it's the sort of thing that could (if it gained any kind of widespread usage) destroy much of the great work done by the ISO 8601 date/time standard.
A small thing for people who never have to deal with date formats outside their own country -- but a significant concern for people who do.
Similarly, the word tonne means a metric unit of 1000kg.
Trying to dilute the meaning by introducing phrasing such as 'metric ton' or 'metric tonne' or 'imperial tonne' (perish the thought!) is a similar regression. Journals - as the curators of common usage - have an important role to play here.
I think we can either surrender, weaken the language, give up, and defer to the confused minority, or we can stick with the sensible, previously agreed definitions and hope they catch up to us in the next lifetime or two.
how, what, why? Who would do something like that? The best is for all to stop using outdated imperial systems and forget that there is another ton than the one that is 1000 kg
I'm really never quite sure what that kind of claim actually means -- it's hosted in the US (it isn't - most of the assets come from proximal CDN for me), it's written exclusively by Americans (it isn't - they are proud of the fact their team covers 115 countries and they have 19 languages between them), it's targeted exclusively to Americans (it isn't - they've launched Quartz India and Quartz Africa), or it's read mostly by Americans (it isn't - I believe their US audience is something less than 50%), or it's owned by Americans (it isn't - Quartz is owned by a Japanese based company), or the person reading it is in North America and wants to believe that most other people are too(I can't really comment on that one).
Perhaps it's just the TLD -- but even that's a pretty flimsy claim. I've got my own .org, and I'm very much not in/owned/near/have/were American.
Anyway, there's this word tonne (which means 1000kg) and it's entirely not at odds with ton (which doesn't).
Unlike gallon, gill, mile, nautical mile, survey foot, quart, pint, fluid ounce, bushel -- which all vary depending which side of the pond you call home -- the tonne is delightfully agnostic of all that madness, and should be embraced and encouraged by sensible journals (for example Quartz) even if it means some North Americans get a bit sensitive about their archaic measurement systems.
