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Comment by jdub | Hacker News Reader

The semantic difference would be important in a song like Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-lot, which includes both speech quotes and imperial measurements.

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Imperial measurements should use the prime symbol and not straight quotes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_%28symbol%29#Designation...

For lyrics, you should just transcribe the pronunciation, eg "six foot two".

I for one would impose metric... it may be harder to rap, but true talent steps up to a challenge...

"But I would walk 804 kilometres, And I would walk 804 more, Just to be the man who walks a 1,608 kilometres, To fall down at your door..."

It's so catchy! Perhaps: "16093.44 meters high" by "0.2286 meter nails"...

1.608 megametres :^)

The units are not spoken, but for clarity they should be notated in the lyrics.

The song was released almost a year before UTF-8 was first presented at USENIX, so I think it is reasonable for the lyrics to be expressed using the commonly available technology available of the time.

TIL about prime symbols. Thank you!

My anaconda don't want none of your poor semantics.

I queried for this song's lyrics, and I found only a single quoting symbol (') used entirely throughout.

Taking a layperson's reading of the lyrics, I didn't find anything off due to quoting issues. If there was any disruption, it was minimal and unnoticed.

Sir Mix-a-lot is an American rapper so the measurements in the song are presumably in US customary system units and not imperial units.

Ahh, but is it US customary or US survey?

Could you try not to be so pedantic regarding my pedantry.

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