Talk:Ton

"net ton" / "gross ton"

Neither of the "long ton" or "short ton" pages mentions the net/gross terminology. Does anyone have a verifiable source to support that usage? This is distinctly different from the usual meaning of the "net"/"gross" modifiers and I'm inclined to think would lead to confusion if actually used that way. Gjxj (talk) 15:13, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, I've taken this out. GA-RT-22 (talk) 18:48, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

IF I recall when referenced to ships - that ton is a measure of Volume (not weight) - and different locations have different definations as to which spaces are included in each defination. Wfoj3 (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Infobox image

I would prefer to keep the infobox image. The main purpose of an infobox image is so the reader can easily see what the article is about, and verify that they are reading the right article. I believe the image accomplishes this purpose. GA-RT-22 (talk) 13:58, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

You see, it distracts from "not to be confused with 1000kg tonne".

• If it were light gray/"copperish" brown/Berlin Cerulean blue, it would be a-ok; it would not interfere with black letters if it were bright-colored. Uchyot (talk) 07:59, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Number of digits in conversion factors

We can do the multiplications and observe that some of the exact conversion factors are terminating decimals with ~10 to ~20 digits. But this number of digits is not necessary in real-life conversions. An amount in tons would never need to be converted with microgram or nanogram accuracy. And the metric ton when exactly converted to pounds is a repeating decimal, so it's awkward to present the exact factor. I suggest we follow the lead of NIST and just show 7 digits. We can also show that this is rounded not exact with {{convert|2,240|lb|kg|sigfig=7|abbr=off|lk=on|disp=x|, about }} - "2,240 pounds, about 1,016.047 kilograms". Indefatigable (talk) 17:13, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm ok with an approximate conversion for as long as it is clearly labelled as an approximation. Indeed, for most applications, 7 significant figures is overkill. Here's my suggestion:

approximate conversion to nearest 0.1 kg in the lead

exact definition at the start of the main body (ie, immediately following lead)

precise conversion (e.g., following NIST) in the main body

Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:15, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. I'll wait a day or two for input from other editors before implementing. Indefatigable (talk) 16:55, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

@Indefatigable: I made some minor changes along these lines, but I wasn't sure how to use the template in the way you suggested. See what you think. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 12:22, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Your changes are an excellent improvement. I'll edit to use the convert template, but preserving number of digits and the text as much as possible. I like to use the template so that we can tell from a glance at the wikitext that the numbers are correct and haven't been messed with by a tricky vandal. Indefatigable (talk) 14:42, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Scope of the article

The scope of the article is a bit unclear, particularly when it comes to whether to include or exclude the unit of exactly 1000 kg. While there is a disclaimer at the top of the article that the article is about "an imperial and United States customary unit of mass", the text points out that the term "ton" (alongside "tonne" and "metric ton") is sometimes used to mean 1000 kg and then proceeds to list serverial different units in the imperial and United States customary system and not only of mass, but also of volume.

I think the issue is, that the term "ton" is not a specific unit, but refers to serveral different units in different systems, depending on region and context of the speaker. Based on this context the scope of this article to restrict to exactly two of them is relativly arbitray.

My feeling is that it would be best to relax this artificial and somewhat misleading restriction and consider this article to serve primarily as an disambiguation and as an description of the underlying concept. Sannaj (talk) 13:51, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

The article is already broader than the "disclaimer", refers to many different tons, and links to many different tons. Supposing the hat-note was amended or removed, can you say more specifically what more the article should include - or do you mean that much should be removed to leave a dab page? It's not obvious that there is anything more to be said about any "underlying concept" or indeed any sources that say there is one. NebY (talk) 15:44, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

@NebY: I suspect Sannaj's comment is written with this edit, suggesting discussion, in mind. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 23:29, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

I can confirm Dondervogel 2's suspition. But to be more specific, I would propose the following changes (and no further): 1) Change the hat-note to: This article is about units of measurement referred to by this term. For the metric unit in particular, see Tonne ... 2) Either remove the Infobox entirely or amand it to also list the 1000 kg ton. --Sannaj (talk) 10:24, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, both, and I'm glad this isn't a suggestion to make the article a disambiguation page. I've created two infobox demonstrations, Demo 1 with one line for the tonne / metric ton and Demo 2 with two lines. Sadly, they demonstrate an awkward inflexibility of {{Infobox unit}}.

1. The metric version has to appear first, whether or not it's the commonest usage, or commonest for Anglophones.
2. All entries use "ton" on the left-hand side, and the first use is not prefixed. It is not possible for the metric one to read "1 tonne in ..." or "1 metric ton in ...".

As a result, the first infobox conversions appear blatantly wrong. A forgiving reader will look further down and appreciate that the first conversions are not for the unqualified "ton" in Anglophone use, though they begin by claiming to be; a hastier reader will simply see wrong values. I don't think either demo is viable.

While we don't have to have an infobox, we do include them for all (I think)imperial, US customary and SI/SI-adjacent units and the easy access to conversions is usually a strength. Removal presents a maintenance problem: soon enough, someone will create one and it may not be as good as what we can achieve together now. That addition might be reverted, citing this discussion, but that would be frustrating and even annoying for everyone.

Having to change the scope to reflect the infobox seems a bit like the tail wagging the dog, but we might have the hat-note saying "This article is mainly about the Imperial and US customary units of mass. For the metric unit .... " - except that {{about}} doesn't support that. It would allow the inelegant "This article is about (mainly) ..." or tagging "mainly" onto the end of the sentence. Would we then need "in particular"? It'll already be a long hat-note. NebY (talk) 11:44, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

I think there is a real merit to having this article rather then just a dissambiguation as well. The units have more in common then other uses of the term, this is what I ment by "underlying concept".

The "in particular" was added in my suggestion for the hat-note, because "units of measurement referred to by this term" does include it. If one keeps the rather long "Imperial and US customary units" it is probably not needed. One could also opt for a short version e.g. "This article is about the unit of measurement. For other uses, see Ton (disambiguation)." or "This article is about units of measurement. For other uses [...]". As for the info-box, I think the problem is that the template is not at all designed to handle this particular case. I am also unsure if the situation is that comparible to the one with e.g. the Gallon, where there is one imperial and one USC version, as both the long ton and the metric ton are sometimes used in the US. With this in mind, I created a draft with the version in my user namespace User:Sannaj/Ton. However this would largely revert NebY recent change. A fully satisfactory solution would maybe require some additions to the template itself or a local copy of the template expansion. --Sannaj (talk) 14:46, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Staying with the infobox for the moment, I've taken your User:Sannaj/Ton and adjusted a couple of things that bothered me to make Demo 4.

1. Linked "metric" to International System of Units#Non-SI units accepted for use with SI
2. |symbol=ton gives us "I ton in ..." rather than "1 in ..."
3. three instances each on the left of "SI units" and "Avoirdupois" make clutter (emphasised in bold!) and are superfluous, with kg and lb repeated on the right, but leaving the parameter blank removes the whole line from display. I tried a work-around and got lucky.
4. For many readers, "Avoirdupois" won't be instantly meaningful. We could have "US/Imperial" but this parameter's freeform - how about simply "pounds"? In which case, we can match that with "kilograms" and lose another bit of abstraction.
5. Expanded "(metric ton)" to "(tonne, metric ton)" - feared it would wrap but seems ok
6. The most minor point: I've made the order long-short-metric, as long and short have more in common. It's the order of the article's table but not its lead.

Broadly speaking, I'd rather not start creating new templates for isolated situations, but maybe we don't have to. NebY (talk) 16:51, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

I like the Demo 4 solution. I am not entirely happy about the pounds & kilograms thing, but I don't hate it either. --Sannaj (talk) 19:28, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

We could have "SI units" and "US/Imperial" (or "Imperial/US") instead of "kilograms" and "pounds" - they're all short enough not to wrap. "Avoirdupois" is the term that could puzzle too many readers for MOS:IBP's key facts at a glance, and it's in that spirit that we might avoid the superfuous abstraction of naming the systems that kg & lb belong to. Wikipedia doesn't have complete uniformity in this - see e.g. Pascal (unit) and Gallon, let alone Millimetre of mercury. NebY (talk) 20:58, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate the effort going into this. Thank you.

Demos 1, 2 and 4 all seem to suggest that 1 ton is (or at least can be) 1000 kg, which is not a correct statement. Where is Demo 3? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:16, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

User:Sannaj/Ton was the third demo; rather than ignore it, I went on to Demo 4. That only says that 1 ton can be 1,000 kg for the tonne / metric ton, just as it only says that the ton is 2,240 lb if it is the long ton. (This may not be obvious from the code, but the end product does distinguish the three tons rather clearly.) This is far better than Demo 1 and Demo 2, which were created to demonstrate the problems of {{infobox unit}} if used as the design intended - blatantly wrong unless read in a peculiarly forgiving way. NebY (talk) 20:45, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

My take on this is that 'ton' is an ambiguous term that can be interpreted as either 2000 lb or 2240 lb, but never 1000 kg. My suggested solution is to limit the scope of this article to the long and short tons. We already have a separate article for tonne (also known as 'metric ton'), to which we can refer readers in the header. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 22:25, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

'Ton' has so many meanings. This article is a useful one in including the various current ones and some historical ones too; refusing to describe the metric one would be baffling and unhelpful. We have separate articles on all three major tons, long, short and metric, plus the shipping ton, gross tonnage and net tonnage, all of which we include in this overview alongside colloquial usage. I realise now that this is the point of Sannaj's original post and am in agreement. We've now got a draft infobox which complies with MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE and it only remains to implement that and sort out the hatnote. NebY (talk) 16:32, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

My concern about all the proposed changes to the infobox is that they imply the unqualified word "ton" can mean 1000 kg. I maintain that only the metric ton is 1000 kg, whereas "ton" is legitimately (albeit ambiguously) used to mean either 2000 lb or 2240 lb. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 22:48, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks; the first words of the lead are a good description of the article's scope and I'm glad we're not disputing them:

Ton is any of several units of measure of mass, volume or force. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses.

I've now created Demo 5, which differs from Demo 4 in two ways:

1. |symbol=ton -> |symbol=, which removes the "symbol" line and less elegantly changes "1 ton in ..." to "1 in ..."
2. extended the descriptions of the equivalents so we now have "ton, long ton", "ton, short ton", "tonne, metric ton" (twice each) - you may find this more effective in the demo - making it clearer that the unqualified "ton" means either the long or short ton but not the metric ton.

NebY (talk) 17:11, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts. I agree Demo 5 is inelegant but prefer it to previous attempts nevertheless. Can we address the inelegance by replacing "1 in ..." with "1 ton or tonne in ..."? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:02, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

The only way I find to get "1 ton or tonne in ..." is to set |symbol=ton or tonne, producing

symbol ton or tonne

which would indicate that the symbols are interchangeable. We don't want that. I've tried more long-winded forms: "ton or tonne, depending", "ton or ton<br>depending", "ton or tonne{{efn|depending on the particular unit}}", but none of them are quite at-a-glance per MOS:IBP and they all introduce another problem. They're repeated in the heading of the left-hand column, that's therefore widened at the expense of the right-hand column and most of the r/h equivalent values and their text are forced to wrap, again making the infobox harder to read. I think it's better to settle for the smaller inelegance.

All that alerted me to another point: the infobox title "ton" was a symbol, and it's more appropriate to use the name of the units, which in sentence-case is Ton. So, I've implemented Demo 5 with that change.

The hatnote is much simpler: this article is about the units of measurement, for other uses see the dab-page. That fits the first sentence and following text, in which the metric ton is included, so there's no need to mention tonne, or long or short ton, in the hatnote.

Phew. Hope that's done! NebY (talk) 17:43, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

I tried the same "ton or tonne" before reading your post, thinking it an improvement. I now see the problem you describe so i reverted. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:00, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks - it's surprisingly painful! NebY (talk) 18:05, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

One common case where the word "ton" alone is used to describe the metric ton is the TNT equivalent, which is used to describe the energy release of large explosions. The spelling "ton" (alone) is also used quite frequently to refer to the metric ton by people in metric countries, many of whom are probably even unaware that other definitions of "ton" actually exist.

E.g. https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/the-monument/key-figures and https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-autobahn-bridges-falling-apart/a-69439952 give weights in "tons" (not in "metric tons" or "tonnes") and by comparing to the respecive French and German versions https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/the-monument/key-figures and https://www.dw.com/de/deutschland-immer-mehr-autobahnbr%C3%BCcken-sind-kaputt/a-69409181 on can clearly see that "ton" means 1000 kg here. This is despite the fact, that the Eiffel tower one actually uses feet for lengh in the English version. --Sannaj (talk) 16:23, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Our purpose here is to document the ton as a variety of units of measurement. We're giving the terms used for those units in English, not those used in other languages. This is normal; on en.wiki, we don't list kilogramm, kilogramo, chilogramma or quilograma; nœud or knoop; stopień Fahrenheita or the Grad Fahrenheit. We concentrate on proper or highly conventional usage, not documenting all the waifs and strays out there, even to deny their propriety. It's possible to find instances of pretty much anything on the internet, especially bad translation, which is yet another reason that finding examples comes under Wikipedia:No original research. NebY (talk) 17:08, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Of course, the other language versions where only provided to clarify the meaning in the English language articles written by persumably the same author not for their own sake, hence I don't exactly understand your argument with other languages here.

Concerning the "examples" aspect: Point taken. I do agree that one could come to this conclusion. Sannaj (talk) 20:43, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Two my kopecks. "Ton" and "tonne" each gets translated into Russian as "tonna" (should it be "morskaya tonna" or "tekhasskaya tonna" for nautical ton and Texas ton, e.g. long ton and short ton respectively). Bottom line: it's a good thing "metric ton" is listed in the article as one of the "tons" there is. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 11:34, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

edit request for discussion regarding infobox

First, let me copy-paste the infobox i wish to discuss:

Ton
General information
Unit system	British imperial US customary metric
Unit of	Mass
Conversions
1  in ...	... is equal to ...
kilograms	1,016.0469 kg (ton, long ton)
	907.1847 kg (ton, short ton)
	1,000 kg (tonne, metric ton)
pounds	2,240 lb (ton, long ton)
	2,000 lb (ton, short ton)
	2,204.62 lb (tonne, metric ton)

i do not think the infobox says what it intends to say, at least not clearly.

i assume the math is correct and i think i know what the numbers mean, but the ... grammar ... in the infobox Conversions ... baffles me.

If i did not know a ton about this topic, my best guess at the grammar implied by the infobox would be something like:

• 1 in kilograms is equal to 1,016.0469 kg (meaning 1 kilogram = 1,016.0469 kg, ton, or long ton)
• 1 in kilograms is equal to 907.1847 kg (meaning 907.1847 kg = 1,016.0469 kg, ton, or short ton)
• 1 in kilograms is equal to 1,000 kg (meaning 1 kilogram = 1000 kg, tonne, or metric ton)
• 1 in pounds is equal to 2,240 lb (meaning 1 pound = 2,240 lb, ton, or long ton)
• 1 in pounds is equal to 2,000 lb (meaning 1 pound = 2,000 lb, ton, or short ton)
• 1 in pounds is equal to 2,204.62 lb (meaning 1 pound = 2,204.62 lb, tonne, or metric ton)

If i were better at making/editing charts on Wikipedia, i might suggest replacing everything in the infobox's "1 in..." column with all the parenthesized parts of the "...is equal to...", and splitting the "...is equal to..." column into a kilograms column and pounds column (_{so we'd have 3 rows [long tons (also called tons), short tons (also called tons), and metric tons (also called tonnes)] and 3 columns [1 ton, kilograms, and pounds]}), even if it means making an exception and not using this particular infobox template on this particular article.

1 ton	in kilograms (kg)	in pounds (lb)
1 long ton, or ton	about 1,016.0469 kg	exactly 2,240 lb
1 short ton, or ton	about 907.1847 kg	exactly 2,000 lb
1 tonne, or metric ton	exactly 1,000 kg	about 2,204.62 lb

But that's a bit wide for an infobox, isn't it?

Wishing everyone safe, happy, productive editing. --~2025-31117-50 (talk) 08:09, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

I completely agree that infobox wasn't clear and only the best solution we could find using {{infobox unit}} for three different tons, as discussed above. Happily, a recent edit to Dalton (unit) showed another way, which I've implemented thus. It's not quite as editor-friendly as using the main parameters but I'm hoping it's clearer for readers. NebY (talk) 19:52, 16 February 2026 (UTC)