Talk:Troy weight

message: We need the absolute weight of one of the scottish units. Rod57 (talk) 03:57, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: For Scottish weight units I recommend "Weights and measures of Scotland" by R.D. Connor, which contains the results of the latest research. It turns out that even before the forced unification the Scottish units weren't so different from the English units. Mostly there were regional units that were different even within Scotland or England, and there were national units that were "originally" (i.e. dating very far back to the time when the large Scottish cities were founded) the same in both countries. The main difference that evolved over the centuries was that different units were lost, e.g. the English stopped using the ell (previously used primarily for measuring goods traded with Germany) and the Scots stopped using the yard (previously used primarily for measuring land). A further complication was that 19th centuries antiquaries sometimes misread the surviving weight and measure standards (e.g. the ell standard), because the tradition how to use them was lost. The book is really amazing – if I remember correctly, Scotland was trading with Venice in the first millennium! --Hans Adler (talk) 11:10, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

text: The scottish troy pound was 7716 BI grains, but often rounded to 7680 grains.  It divides to 16 ounces, of 16 drops of 30 grains, and 16 pounds make a stone.  Denominations of weights tend to run to binary powers, which encourages powers of two in weights.  Wendy.krieger (talk) 07:52, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Scottish troy measure is unrelated to either of the English systems.  'troy' as an appellation to a weight system first appeared with the tower system in 1309.  The troy oz of 31,104 gramms appeared somewhat later: thus troy can not refer to the town in france, but is a method of weighing of precious things by balance.  Wendy.krieger (talk) 06:44, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scottish system 

message: The progression of subdivisions makes the smallest, the blank, equal to about 281 nanograms. Yowza! Were these finest of units ever in common use, even by the mint? It seems hard to believe that one could conceive of weighing anything to anywhere near that precision in 1649.
Joe Avins (talk) 17:05, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: At the time these units were developed, precision of measurement was progressing by leaps and bounds. They had no idea what kind of precision would be possible in future centuries, but they wanted to be prepared. Kind of like using 4 digits for computer dates instead of 2, or other situations where extra room is left for future possibilities. Even though the smallest mint weights were not in routine use, the standards laboratories that supervised the mints had very advanced technology (for the time) and went to extreme lengths in calibrating their own standards. Zyxwv99 (talk) 01:50, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mint Weights 

message: Troy pounds are not usually used when referring to the weight of precious metals, even if more than 12 ounces are involved.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by MissouriOzark1947 (talk • contribs) 14:40, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not usual 

message: I came to this article looking for a comparison between Troy and metric measures, as a highly educated layperson, so I could translate the “10 grams of gold flakes monthly” claim of Venezuelan miners into fractions of a Troy ounce. I’ve left the article totally confused, as a layperson, at the way numbers are presented.
Here is one example of the seemingly nonsensical way numbers are presented: “one troy ounce (oz t) equals exactly 31.103 476 8 grams.” How is one supposed to interpret the meaning of this string of nine digits that has a decimal point after the second digit, and spaces after the sixth and eighth digits, in the absense of any explanatory footnotes? It doesn’t follow any standard way of expressing a number that I am familiar with. If this presentation is in accordance with a Wikipedia number-display standard I have never seen it used elsewhere on the site despite years of almost-daily views.
There are many other places in the article where numbers are displayed in nonsensical ways or the display is inconsistent.
Can someone clean this up? I would but I don’t know the subject well enough to do so and I don’t want to destroy some standard ways of presenting the numbers (but obscure to the layperson).
Thanks for reading.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.113.172.196 (talk) 15:24, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Those are just digit grouping spaces. The use of spaces for digit grouping has been very common for several decades in English scientific writing for international audiences. I remember being introduced to it in the early 1980s. It avoids possible confusion between decimal point and the decimal comma used in some other languages. Indefatigable (talk) 20:20, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nonsensical numbers 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 01:09, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: In the section Troy pound, for a long time the text has read .  appears to believe that it needs greater precision and changed it to . I reverted with the edit note "RV good faith but for most readers, the approximation is all they need: for anyone for whom it matters, assume that they can do the maths. 
Eric counter-reverted, this time with . [This is a new concept of 'approximate': going to five decimal places rather than two yields a difference from the original approximation of less than .]
Although the amount involved is trivial, the real argument to me is wp:think of the reader. We should not annoy the reader with pettifogging detail, indeed IMO if the text needs changing, it should say . So I am reverting again per WP:BRD and invite comment from other editors to see if we can reach a consensus. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:10, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, 4 significant figures is pleanty. Anyone who needs more precision can use the grain values and do the math. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:12, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

text: The reason I put that is that it shows that the conversion factor has repeating sevens, due to the fact that 5760 equals 235. For those with a mathematical inclination, this is an interesting fact. I really don't think it's worth arguing about. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:08, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Approximately (BRD discussion) 

message: Referring to the section ‘Dutch system’, the 20th part of the ounce (whether troy, market or weigh-house) was in Dutch called engels, in the singular, the plural was engelsen. (Engels litterally means ‘English’, as it was inspired by the English pennyweight. The French name for the 20th of an oune was esterlin, which is likewise etymologically related to ‘(penny) sterling’.)
The 32nd part of the engels was in Dutch called aas in the singular, plural azen. In Dutch as can only mean ‘axle’ or ‘ash’ (of a fire, not the tree). Exceptionally, as can mean the Roman weight or coin.
The so-called Holland troy weight (“Hollandsch Trooisch Gewicht”) used a pound of 2 troy marks or 16 troy ounces, instead of the 12 ounces usual elsewhere.
Amsterdam weigh-house weight {“Amsterdamsch Waag-gewicht”) was 40 ´´azen´´ heavier to the pound than Holland troy weight.
I have not changed anything in the article, mainly because I do not have my sources (mainly the book on old Dutch weights, Oude Nederlandse Gewichten by Zevenboom and Wittop Koning, and the Grote Winkler Prins Encyclopedie, 1972–75 edition) readily available to cite at present. — Mithrennaith (talk) 05:37, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems with Dutch (language mainly) 

message: The several references to Troy weight 'probably' deriving from Troyes rather ignores the comprehensive work in wiki-France which adds considerable detail to the certainty of the Troyes markets being a valid origin. 
The 1910 efforts by Watson to suggest 'tron' or an Arabian origin do not seem to have valid weight (! pun). I think despite the entertainment derived from his philological research that historical detail (as per wiki-France) should require his deletion from here and the removal of 'probably' from the source being Troyes. 
Nojoking (talk) 06:34, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Sources in another Wikipedia article, such as the one at the French Wikipedia, don't count unless they are cited in this article. So someone would have to figure out which article Nojoking is referring to, identify which sources support the claim, gain access to the sources, read them, and decide if they really do support the claim. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:34, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Troy from Troyes - remove 'probable'  

message: Both capitalized and lower-case "t" in "Troy" are used here. Is there an agreed-upon way to style this? troy ounce or Troy ounce? -MJ (talk) 03:34, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  capitalization of "Troy"