When looking at the 12 inch ruler, finding a quarter of an inch may seem like a mission, but there’s no need to worry! Follow the ruler to the first inch and you will see that there are individual lines between zero and one. These are all a sixteenth of an inch, thus the fourth line that is slightly longer is a quarter of an inch! It isn’t as difficult as you may think.
You can then use the markings to work out half an inch, as well as three-quarters of an inch. Alternatively, if you notice that there is a thicker or longer line midway between zero and one, you can assume that this is half an inch, and then you can look to the longer line between the beginning of the ruler and the half an inch mark which will also give you a quarter measurement.
Once you have found this method easy, you can move on to becoming aware of where the measurement for an inch-and-a-half is, and so on and so forth. However, it can be daunting when you don’t know what all the lines between the main measurements are.
Do remember that you will be able to see numerical denominations printed onto the ruler in some cases, and other instruments such as a tape measure can allow you to accurately measure the length of items (as well as distances) with clearly-marked inches along the edges for you to reference with ease. Practice makes perfect, and for those of us accustomed to centimetres, it just takes a while to get into the swing of things.
