What is a tape measure?
A tape measure is a tool that allows you to measure an object or distance and has many features than just measuring. Measuring tapes can be made of cloth, plastic, fiberglass, or a metal strip. All of them have equally spaced markings indicating a measurement. It can be commonly found in toolboxes, belt clips, and some are small enough to fit in your pocket. Many tradespeople and surveyors use tape measures daily and depending on the one you have the scale may vary. Some tape measures can be only imperial while some have both imperial and metric units.
How to read an imperial measuring tape
The numbers are numerical in ascending order from left to right are one inch apart. In between, every inch is an equal amount of lines. Some will have 16 lines between every inch while some others will have 32 markings. For our example if you see 16 lines in between every inch this indicates a 1/16th of an inch or normally written as 1/16″.
Secondly every 12 inches is equal to 1 foot, on your tape measure it will say 1F at the 12-inch mark. It just means 1 foot and at the 24-inch mark it would say 2F which means 2 feet.
Now that you know how to read the numbers in between an inch, total inches, and feet, just add these values in order to come up with your total length.
How to read a metric measuring tape
A metric system is a very much easier concept to grab versus the imperial system. Every metric measuring tape is counted in centimeters and millimeters. Every 1 centimeter has 10 millimeters and each millimeter is expressed as a decimal in our final value.
Every decimeter(10 centimeters) is usually expressed in a different color the example below we can see that 90 is our closest whole ten number, we then add the closest centimeter, and add the decimal point that meets our target.
Now that you know how to read a measuring tape in both imperial and metric, here are 7 tips and features about measuring tapes.