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“Tons” or “Tonnes”

Tons is predominantly used in American (US) English (en-US) while tonnes is predominantly used in British English (used in UK/AU/NZ) (en-GB).

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Usage by country

Where each spelling is used

Of the 12 countries below, 9 prefer “tons” and 2 prefer “tonnes”. Usage levels are out of 100; the more common spelling in each country is in bold.

Usage level out of 100 (if available).
Country tons tonnes Preference
United States 96 4 “tons”
United Kingdom 46 54 “tonnes”
India 76 24 “tons”
Philippines 93 7 “tons”
Canada 63 37 “tons”
Australia 40 60 “tonnes”
Liberia 100 0 “tons”
Ireland 55 45 “tons”
New Zealand 50 50 No clear preference
Jamaica 61 39 “tons”
Trinidad & Tobago 66 34 “tons”
Guyana 78 22 “tons”
Usage

Examples in context

Real sentences for each spelling. Hover an example to copy it.

“tons”

  • …the station consumed 18 million tons of coal and produced 35,000,000,000…
  • Around 65,000 tons eventually reached Malta in July…
  • 2015 - 15,521,000 tons
  • 1934 (1,800 tons, 2 × 105mm guns, 260
  • 3 fast attack craft 430 tons full load 1 × 76…
  • She was carrying about 43 tons of gold ingots at the…
  • …boats carrying up to 200 tons could pass, but after consideration…
  • …transported 15,837 passengers and 25,949.2 tons of cargo.
  • …the world, at 49.1 metric tons per person in 2008.
  • …successfully withstand the countless heavy tons of marble and other materials…

“tonnes”

  • …production capacity of 0.676 million tonnes per year and a peak…
  • …mosque is built from 300,000 tonnes of Indian sandstone.
  • …(PKR 1 billion), including 21 tonnes of blankets, dispatched by Canadian…
  • …in October 1951, weighing 56 tonnes but still lacking an engine.
  • …by manure production equal 32,394 tonnes of nitrogen and 3,784 tonnes…
  • …website, NWR had 58 million tonnes and 186 million tonnes of…
  • …weight is less than 40 tonnes.
  • An additional 27,000 tonnes of material remained for on–site…
  • …metres high and weighing 37 tonnes, and represents the "eight legs"…
  • …company produced around 1.5 million tonnes of oil and 1.1 billion…

Examples are Wikipedia snippets under the CC ShareAlike 3.0 license.

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