Hair growth

Forgive me if this sounds like a dumb question, but when people talk about their hair growth, do they mean stretched or unstretched? For example, if you say "I have 3 inches of new growth on my hair" do you mean that it's 3 inches when it's stretched or 3 inches in its natural unstretched state?

I'm trying to figure out what I should be thinking in terms of how much my hair grows every month. If the average is a 1/2 inch per month, what does that mean for curly hair? I've been confused by this since I started transitioning!

Thanks!

When people measure the growth/length of their hair they are usually stretching it. I think it would be kind of hard to measure your growth when its shrunken and all curled up.

Also a lot of people actually measure in inches how long there hair is as they stretch it along a ruler so like BP said, they're measuring the stretched length because measuring the shrunken length is a little misleading, seeing as everyone has different amounts of shrinkage. Hopefully that helps!