> There's nothing saying that inches have to be expressed in 1/32nds as
opposed to "thou" (0.001").

No. But usage says that you don't usually use eg 234.45 inches. Whereas you
can happily shift up a gear in a metric system by using a larger unit name
that is really just a way of expressing a power of 10. eg if the base unit
is metre then all units are a power of ten factor and the word metre. In cgs
units you COULD use eg kilometres for length which would be naughty in the
extreme but still entirely understandable as a wrong way of expressing
deca-kilo-centimetres :-)


RM

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