Provided your audience realizes that a US "penny" is a thing. I live in a land that actually has a unit of currency called a penny, the US does not. W Germany used to have a pfennig and I can't remember what 100th of a Dutch gilder was called
Thankfully we have tamed our penny somewhat, from the wild beast it used to be. It used to be abbreviated to "d" and there were 12 of them to the shilling (s) and 20 shillings to the pound (l ie: £, which is what happens when you get the ink pen out).
In 1971 we decided to stop taking the piss and fall in line with the rest of the civilized world and decimalise: One squid = 100 pennies!
So the US call their cents "pennies". How cute 8) Those odd abbreviations I mentioned earlier - LSD for pounds/shillings and pence. They are sort of derived from libra/sestertii/denarius ie Roman currency units. I've glossed over florins, sovereigns, groats and all the other weird and wonderful coinage of the realm. We were not alone, most countries have some pretty odd past coinage and currency ... or didn't bother and stuck with barter for simplicity.
The parent comment you are replying to is making a statement about precision vs other metrics such as user familiarity, accuracy, etc. The size of an American Penny and a 9v battery are both very precise, the former even more so. The lack of universitality is a different argument, the tangent your comment discusses.
"Precise" has a precise meaning, and it was a pedantic (though in a way I appreciate) comment on that. Your lack of familiarity with "American" pennies does not change that they are a very well defined size.
This often comes up in science discussions because to many lay people "Precise", "Accurate" and other terms are used interchangeably, when they have distinct meanings
> Provided your audience realizes that a US "penny" is a thing. I live in a land that actually has a unit of currency called a penny, the US does not. W Germany used to have a pfennig and I can't remember what 100th of a Dutch gilder was called
If it's being used for scale in an image, why does it matter if they know the name of it rather than knowing how big it is? Do people need to know who the bearded man is on the front of it as well?
A guinea is a pound and a shilling - a sort of fat or posh pound I suppose. Horse race prizes here are still priced in guineas eg here's a random link, noting guineas:
I can imagine that in the past, a popinjay or boastfool (made that one up) caused the guinea to be created because they wanted to outflance someone else. I don't think £1 1s is a useful lump of money, ever. I think it is simply there for bragging rights and further nonsense.
There is also the sovereign - "sov" - also a nickname for a pound but it isn't one. Gold sovs are worth a shit load these days.
Thankfully we have tamed our penny somewhat, from the wild beast it used to be. It used to be abbreviated to "d" and there were 12 of them to the shilling (s) and 20 shillings to the pound (l ie: £, which is what happens when you get the ink pen out).
In 1971 we decided to stop taking the piss and fall in line with the rest of the civilized world and decimalise: One squid = 100 pennies!
So the US call their cents "pennies". How cute 8) Those odd abbreviations I mentioned earlier - LSD for pounds/shillings and pence. They are sort of derived from libra/sestertii/denarius ie Roman currency units. I've glossed over florins, sovereigns, groats and all the other weird and wonderful coinage of the realm. We were not alone, most countries have some pretty odd past coinage and currency ... or didn't bother and stuck with barter for simplicity.