Converting and assembly to an item, while keeping the measurement listing the same...

We have some assemblies we use just to measure square footage without a product/item associated with it. We converted the assembly to and item so we could easily add in a preset waste percentage, but the units then report to EA as a default.

Question 1...is selecting and manually changing the measurement type the only way to keep linear-linear, area-area, etc?

Questions 2...our customers like that on everything else we do not abbreviate our units, we spell out "Linear Foot", "Square Foot" etc...yet when performing the step above, there doesn't seem to be a way to manually type in the unit you display in reports as you would when you build out a typical item library. Is this true?

Thanks,

Mike