I'm toying with using normal metric measurements for the alien race I'm writing about and other esoteric or even semi-familiar terms (possibly kloms which sounds close to kilometer and gives an impression of a similar distance)?

I know that in some fantasy stories they use "marks" for time measurement. It comes from "candlemark" or the length of time it takes for a beeswax candle to melt down to a mark on the candle.

What would you suggest for measurements? And what reasoning would you have for said measurement?

I have hard time with made up words for things simply for the sake of made up words--pass the feldercarb--

If you say, I'll meet you in three kips. Then the character runs off and grabs his whatever and hurries back. The reader knows kips are short. If you say three kips and the other character goes home showers and eats a big meal and has time for a nap then the reader knows kips are long(maybe more akin to an hour)

If you have humans in your story you have the chance to give explanations. Livalera said she'd meet me in 3 kips. I glanced at my watch--still set to earth time. That meant I had to meet her in an hour and a half. Thus the reader knows a kip is 30 min.

But I do try to avoid the odd terms unless I am making a point. Such as different length of year ect.

A very organic culture might measure time in fast or slow heartbeats or in days or hands of days.

A very football-oriented culture might measure time in halfs, and they could measure length in fields (100 yards) and downs (10 yards).

A very mobile culture might measure distance in how long it takes to get from one place to another--the distance from San Francisco to New York is a car-week or a plane-day (or if they slur the terms, cweek or plady).

One more example--when my children were too young to understand minutes and hours, I'd tell them how long by referring to something they watched regularly on tv--an hour was how long it took to watch SESAME STREET and a half hour was how long it took to watch MR ROGERS. Shorter than that would be ZOOBILEE ZOO or TODAY'S SPECIAL.

You can play with the metaphors of a culture or a technology level or an understanding level and adapt your measurements to fit those metaphors.

That's the best rule: if your POV character understands it, your reader should understand it.

So Kathleen's suggestions could lead to good units. Not only would your reader relate to Heartbeats or Television shows or Halftimes, he/she would also gain insight into your culture. I'm less enthusiastic about travel times between ficticious cities, since your reader won't have the same insights into these units as your POV character would have.

Of course, you might have a very strange land, where time and weight and distance behave differently from the way we measure them. In that case, you really MUST invent a new way of measuring these things. For example, suppose time passes differently for people facing west than it does for people facing east. In that case, you'd really need a way to measure time that would account for your direction.

As there's no moon, there seems little reason for there to be months. The Roman month is related to the Lunar Cycle, afterall. Without it, I figure there would be four "months" or Seasons. And these aren't even of equal length, though eventually the people may have set them up as equal lengths for timekeeping terms.

These months are the Dry Season (Summer), the Rainy Season (Fall), the Growth Season (Winter) and Harvest Season (Spring). In fact, during the Growth Season there would still be rain from time to time, just not as often as during the Rainy Season. As for Winter being the Growth Season (I'll probably think of a better name eventually), it is the time when the planet is furthest from the sun, and thus the best time of year for growing crops and the like.

This has minimal affect on the story itself, seeing that the story takes place in outer space. However, the fact that they come from a moonless world does influence their sense of time. They originally DID come from a world with a moon. However, they were exiled from that world around 3,000 years ago and had lost most of their technology after being exiled to their new world. They had forgotten their true origins (instead having myths about being exiled for hubris and the like). It is more than likely that, in a world without a constant reminder (a moon) of months or of any way of keeping time... that months themselves would vanish. There would be four months, not twelve or thirteen. These would be the seasons of the planet.

As for the planetary rotation length... that doesn't matter, really. It is entirely reasonable that they would have come up with a unit of time based on atomic vibrations or the like and thus, in an attempt to modernize their world, abandoned older measurements for such precise measurements as the Europeans use (kilometers, kiloliters, etc.), including even a metric second.

I'm unsure about why we came up with a Base-60 measurement for time (and I don't think anyone *truly* knows why we use Base-60, outside the fact that "we always have"), thus I am unsure if they'll use traditional minutes, or have 100 minute hours and the like. It seems likely I'll stick with more traditional units of time (outside of the "Seasons") for convienance sake.

The primary thing about these aliens is that they are very family/clan oriented. Wars have started between clans because of religion, land, and so forth. Family is the most important thing. While they have united across their world to build a ship to find their home, and while different groups are on the starship working together, when problems arise, people will divide into their family groups to protect their own.

I doubt the clans still use their own original measuring units or the like however. <chuckle> As the most powerful clan (the one who united everyone else) is the most scientifically-minded, it is more than likely that measurements have been homonogized into one whole.

Thank you for your comments though. While it might be considered "cheating" by some purists... it'll be easier for most readers.

The Chinese originally used a 365 degree compass, for the 365 days in a year, until at some point someone figured out how much more useful 360 would be. This is the system that became general throughout the world for the same reason that we use place values and a zero--because it makes many calculations easier.

All your dialog is being translated into English for the reader, so your units should be as well. If you need to remark on this, go ahead, but try not to disrupt the flow. Either banish such discussions to an Appendix as Tolkein did, or keep them short and relevant.

As to the units themselves, there are three obviously available sorts of units in English. Units which are logically constructed (probably either mandated by a government sometime in history or adopted by a particularly logical group of people) should probably be rendered as metric. Units which are now standard, but developed out of everyday life best correspond to imperial. Units which are not standard should be rendered as body-units or other early forms (e.g. hands/arms/paces/day's-journey for distance). It's probably a bad idea to use terms like "cubit" -- better to stick with understandables like "forearm".

Note that if your story is set among a species differently sized from us, using body-derived units can conceal this.