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How proper is proper?
5

How proper is proper?

How proper is proper?

(OP)
I'm wondering how much attention I should pay to tiny details when submitting a report.  

Everything I submit I spend a fairly significant time editing format.  For example, I was just doing up a report for my boss and a plant manager of one of our customer's.  It was all ready to go, printed, when I noticed at one point I had "Site No:." instead of   "Site No.:".  So I printed the page off again.  

I know that when I read someone's report and I see a spelling mistake or sa table with different formatting from the others, I lose a little bit of respect for it.

Am I just being ridiculous here or are others like me?  

RE: How proper is proper?

I have the same obsessive - compulsive behaviors....

RE: How proper is proper?

I like things to be correct ... but I have a limit! That would have been beyond mine ... but then I probably would have written "Site Number:" smile

cheers
Helpful SW websites  FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions  FAQ559-1091

RE: How proper is proper?

I'm the same way.  It really bugs me when I see typos or inconsitencies and it really, really bugs me when they're mine.

RE: How proper is proper?

or INCONSISTENCIES... case in point

RE: How proper is proper?

It is nice to see engineers taking the time and effort to do things consistent and correct.  I agree about the losing some respect when you notice that someone doesn't take the effort to check these things.  It does have a limit.  Good-enough and on time is better than perfect and late.

RE: How proper is proper?

I have a real problem with reports, I have to write them several times over to get them right (as right as I can).
At the end, I rely on spell and grammar checker for a lot of these details... did your's not pick this up and put a little green squiggly line underneath?

When it comes to "Site Number:" or "Site No.:" everyone seems to write it one way or the other but isn't "no," redudant if it is followed by a number? e.g.:
"Site 12" dosn't gain anything by being written as "Site Number 12" because "12" is a number (even if you actually write "Site Twelve" as one commentator in the "Positive and Negative" thread argues is more correct).

I also tend to think that my role is not to be a journalist or an english major but to convey ideas. I am sorry if dsome people allow themselves to be distratced from the engineering and ideas content by the spelling and grammar. Note it, be irritated by it maybe but the object is the conveying of ideas and information. So long as they suffer no ambuguity where is the problem? IN fact, i would be concerned to hear people say they "didn't get the message" because there were typos, or it used Arial instead of Times New Roman.... as an engineer it ought to be that your primary concern with any report is to put in or take out as much information and understanding as you can. I would be disappinted in anyengineer who decided to judge a report on its spelling.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: How proper is proper?

I always thought that spelling skills were directly related to some psychic skills.  Perhaps that is because I have no talent for remembering the cryptic letter combinations that are required to spell things correctly.  So when I read a report that has spelling and grammar errors, I can only see a small fraction of the errors.  So for me, ignorance is bliss.  For those who seem to get overly concerned about spelling and grammar errors, get over it.  Most engineers are just doing the best they can with the time that they have.  I suspect that those who are bothered the most by the errant typos and grammatical errors are just looking for a way to express their feelings of superiority.

RE: How proper is proper?

hte pnoit is to get hte pinot arcsos so the rdeaer udnrestndas hte ponit rghit?

Brian

RE: How proper is proper?

You missed the capital at the beginning of the sentence.

lol

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: How proper is proper?

I satnd crrotecd.  Nto olny deos my splleing scuk btu so deos my grmamr adn cpalitaiziotn...btu yuo gte hte pnoit. :)

Brian

RE: How proper is proper?

Deja vu!
I appologise to everyone for leading us into this "Cambridge spelling" morass again.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: How proper is proper?

macmet...keep it up.  Mistakes in reports directly reflect on the credibility of the report.  If you take away the opportunity for the reader to snipe at small errors, perhaps he/she will actually read the report and, even better, heed its advice!

RE: How proper is proper?

2
The argument goes, if there are spelling mistakes then the author hasn't checked the report, so how do you trust the numbers?

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: How proper is proper?

I'll remove any error I see- can't very well fix the ones I don't see.

RE: How proper is proper?

When you write a report, the first thing you need to know: "who is your audience", the next thing to know: "who else might be reading it"

If it will be read by someone higher in the foodchain (with limited technical knowledge and big power) the typos and slang probably will dictate your carreer.

RE: How proper is proper?

carreer ?
B.E.

RE: How proper is proper?

I have recently come to the sad conclusion that in most cases, the only person that is likely to closely scrutinize your reports is ... you.  This is especially true if the report is lengthy, not as true for short memos.  For lengthy reports, make sure the executive summary/abstract and conclusions are well written.  Also make sure that your plots and tables are well formatted and easily understandable without reading the text.

If you're really looking to maximize your bang for the buck, spend time reading and re-reading your email before clicking send (and turn on the automatic spell checker!).  In general, more people will be exposed to your writing through your emails than through your reports.

RE: How proper is proper?

My problem is this:
I feel the same way about getting things right. Typos and inconsistencies do agitate me. However, I see everyone else getting away with it and I am starting to develop a "when in Rome" attitude. For example, salespeople, in some instances, can be very lightly educated (don't take offense educated salespeople), yet make way more money than engineers, be very sloppy with reports and not have to adhere to the long hours that we do. I think that many people take advantage of our high ethics. I think its time to loosen up and start going for what is rightfully ours.

Ed

RE: How proper is proper?

I have an ongoing battle with one of the engineers I work with; I know that I can be unnecessarily pedantic about getting things like spelling and grammar correct but he won't see that a simple typo can change the whole meaning of his work - especially when the typos include forgetting the "m" for "milli" in his units.

There should be limits and it seems that most people set these limits at different levels, but caring too much seems to carry less risk than not caring at all - provided the deadline gets met!

RE: How proper is proper?

I go with JMW's last paragraph. There is a line between the purpose and the form of the report, and it should never be crossed in favour of the form. If you spend 30% of the time creating an idea, and 70% correcting the grammar while you're trying to convey it, you're not working at an optimum.
IMO.

RE: How proper is proper?

Sorry, I disagree completely. It is not unusual for me to take two days to write a report explaining a calculation that took a couple of hours to sort out.

A few years back two of us worked through a problem on the basis of a 5 minute discussion. We then went off and did a morning of checking out. We then presented a plan that has saved the company we work for something like $40 million. It involved a complete commitment by the project team to achieve that, you can bet damn well we had to justify every dotted i and every crossed t.

Big ideas need good salesmanship. One of the rules of spaceship design : " A bad idea, well presented, lives to fight another day. A good idea badly presented never gets that chance."

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: How proper is proper?

He says, "So what!?! You understood it, didn't you?"

I respond, "I had to guess at a couple of things and had to re-read it three times to figure out the rest!"

This conversation occurs about 6 times a week between a designer and me, his checker. And that's about a drawing, not a report! Oy Vey!

RE: How proper is proper?

I recently read a report on the Web about MS Word spell checker and Grammar checker. After a lot of study they came to the conclusion that the gramar checker was nearly worthless and the spell checker was better, but both were only effective in the hands of someone who already  knew grammar and was a good speller!

Many moons ago, when I was in university, I had a lab partner in a CAD class. We were discussing a project we were working on and he used the phrase, "Them are the ones we want!" I chuckled a bit, thinking he was being funny. The university was in the intermountain west of the US, and such grammar was heard occasionaly. Well, after a few more of these it was obvious that he was really talking, and not goofing around. Sadly, that lack of education made it very difficult to accept his credibility as an engineer. If he has a hard time with grammar school education, how can I trust his college education?

RE: How proper is proper?

Can you imagine I found a spelling mistake in my 10 yr. old dissertation? I was mortified. What can you do? Almost every paper I read has a mistake; sometimes the mistakes change the whole meaning of what the author is trying to say. Having gone through, like most of you, periods of intense pressure to get a document out the door, I can sympathize. Understanding those pressures, you can relate to finding a small mistake or two, can't you?

RE: How proper is proper?

When I sat down for an interview a few years ago there was a misspelling circled (very obviously in red ink!!), on MY resume as the person conducting the interview pulled my resume from his desk and began scanning over it!   Upon seeing this, I was quick to make a joke about getting to skip the “attention to detail” questions!!  

I still work very hard to make my boss laugh when I screw up!

Like Greglocock, I spend about 10% of my time on analysis and 90% of my time on writing the report of the analysis.  We laugh about this to ourselves, but the rest of the world perceives engineers as meticulous detail gurus with little common sense (sadly.....this is often the case).  I suppose being obsessive about the little things is simply a necessary evil that goes with the territory.  

RE: How proper is proper?

prost--I hate it when I have to look at my thesis.  Every time I look at it I catch something else wrong with it, and not a thing I can do about it.  And that's after it had several people look at it, I looked at it with each round, and then it went through another round of review when it got converted from a university thesis to a state-sponsored report.

Kinda like visual inspection of yard after yard of fillet weld.  It's almost never the case that the second person to inspect the weld doesn't find anything the first person missed.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376

RE: How proper is proper?

Let's work with your figures, Greg:

If I spend 10% of the time working out the engineering (the bit that's generates the revenue) and 90% getting the report right, that's fine, if that's the balance to get the engineering ideas expressed, but if that is 80% getting the ideas expressed correctly and 10% getting the spelling and grammar right, then that is 10% engineering effort lost forever.

At a guess, my time working on engineering ideas is worth more than my time spent getting it letter perfect.

IF i write something for publication, it will be proof read by a professional proof-reader, the publicity agent the company employs. They employ these people because it is their job to get these things right, not mine.

If the company does not recognise or acknowledge a similar need in reports and will not pay experts to proof read reports, it is because they don't consider it necessary.

If management thought my grammar and spelling skills were perfect they would save themselves the expense of proof reading. If they thought it necessary for reports, they would employ a proofreader in the office.

Ergo, management want 20% money makers from me and only 80% report writing effort.

Think about what your time is worth and where your time is more profitably spent. If you obseeively use your time to get spelling right, maybe you ought to consider the options. Tell management that you'd rather work at engineering and make a case for a proofreader.
 
Hey, what project that will save $40million can't afford a proof reader? who, even in management, will reject a $40,000,000 pay day for a misplaced comma. (yeah, i know form experience they will lose money for all sorts of stupid reasons, but for a comma or a spelling mistake?)

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: How proper is proper?

How about a decimal point?

RE: How proper is proper?

If it's a decimal point it isn't grammar and spelling, is it?

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: How proper is proper?

But its all part of the same proof-reading requirements...

RE: How proper is proper?

YOU are responsible for anything with your name attached.  A proofreader usually has neither ownership nor interest in your writings nor sufficient technical knowledge to truly understand what you are trying to convey.  Technical writers know about short, snappy sentences, and often cannot seem to grasp the notion that not all ideas can be conveyed in short, snappy sentences.

And frankly, the overally ability of people to spell correctly has decreased considerably in the last 20 yrs.  They make the same type of mistakes that spell-checkers make, e.g., compliment instead of complement, etc.

TTFN



RE: How proper is proper?

IR stuff, I find myself making those kinds of mistakes when I KNOW the difference!  Grrrr...

On the bright side, I did catch the grammar checker confusing "advice" and "advise"- it wants me to use "advice" for a verb.

RE: How proper is proper?

Apart from spelling mistakes and grammar, I also try to put symmetry or good looks into the document. This consumes most of the time but I am helpless. Though I spend lot of time, I feel something wrong whenever I try to read my past documents or posts in this site. I, being a non native english speaker, discount the mistakes myself.

Still, I do like a perfect(?) document.

RE: How proper is proper?

Do you also use coloured, scented paper?
I'm confused about all this... of course calculations must be flawless and decimal point errors are NOT allowed, and of course grammar and spelling have to be correct, and yes, I myself often find reports and stuff with horrible grammar/spelling questionable, but spending half a day on pondering whether a single sentence REALLY needs a comma or not seems a waste of time and money. While I'm not a native English speaker, I never recieved a complaint from anywhere/anyone that I wasn't understood, and my boss, who piles all the English stuff on my desk, never complained about my errors either. If he wants better, he should've employed an English, not an Engineering major.

RE: How proper is proper?

The most ridiculous obsessive-compulsive urge I have is this: once I've finished the report to my satisfaction and pressed "print", then realised I forgot to set the printer up to print double-sided, I feel the need to either print it again or photocopy it double sided so that no one knows I wasted all that paper. Which I know defeats the object!

RE: How proper is proper?

Coloured paper, yes. I use colour papers as section dividers for regulatory documentation. Some auditors have good impression on this and no bad remarks so far.

Scented paper is something that I didn't try till now. Love letters are never considered as technical documents in this geography

RE: How proper is proper?

“….life, liberty and the pursuit of perfection” (paraphrased)
Word list:
     Obsessive,
     Compulsive
     Undisciplined
     Lack of attention to detail
     Poor time management
     Perfectionist
If you think "perfectionist" doesn’t belong in this list, you don’t work for HR.

Perfection is an unobtainable ideal and anyone who believes they can achieve perfection is doomed to always fail; but while the pursuit of perfection is laudable, that pursuit is governed by a law of diminishing returns.

I can buy an instrument accurate to (+/-)5% full scale for $10.
I can buy another accurate to (+/-)0.25% of reading for $5000.
What is the difference?

We don’t measure perfection, we measure achievement and we measure success.
Accuracy and precision have a price: it requires judgement to know to what degree absolute accuracy is approached.

Engineers succeed in an imperfect world because they know how to manage imperfection.
Everything is expressed in terms that define that lack of perfection: error limits, tolerances and confidence levels; and there are standards and codes of practice for most things.

Success is to find the limit of the cost/attainment(benefit) relationship that achieves the objective.
We must know what that limit is.

Why should we expect more of the written word? How do you measure perfection in the written word? How do you “know” and prove that what you have done is 100% accurate? How do you justify such a claim? How do you know where the limit is for diminishing returns?

Read the small print.
Almost any document or contract has clauses that are designed to protect against the consequences of imperfection. When all else fails we have insurance. The practical world is designed around imperfection.
The “Latent defects” clause in a contract is particularly useful.
 
If we must then I suggest we include our own small print in every document or report that declares that the standard of spelling (just as we have standards for everything else) is equal to or better than achieved using MS Word spellchecker.

Let us allow that in this thread, the statement of absolutes is but a shorthand form that actually means we are not worlds apart but only degrees of excellence apart.
Otherwise we will argue this same point time and again in thread after thread without resolution.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: How proper is proper?

"I can buy an instrument accurate to (+/-)5% full scale for $10.
I can buy another accurate to (+/-)0.25% of reading for $5000.
What is the difference?"

Confidence in the results.  If I'm building a tree house, 5% accuracy is more than good enough.  If I'm building the space ship, it may be unacceptable.

If I'm presenting a technical concept to my engineering peers, it is acceptable to misspell some words, or use poor grammer.  However, if I am attempting to convey the same "type" (not neccessarily the same level of detail) of information to upper management, typos & poor grammar detract from my credibility.

Will I ever make a perfect presentation?  Of course not.  Should I do everything in my power to make it as perfect as possible?  I think the answer is yes.

RE: How proper is proper?

Quote (melone):

If I'm presenting a technical concept to my engineering peers, it is acceptable to misspell some words, or use poor grammer.  However, if I am attempting to convey the same "type" (not neccessarily the same level of detail) of information to upper management, typos & poor grammar detract from my credibility.

So, you believe it is okay to be sloppy with engineers but not "upper management"? Is this sort of like kissing up to the boss? Gee, what a wonderful teammate. ponder

Here's a thought. What happens when your current peer rises up the ranks into upper management?

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: How proper is proper?

Ashereng, are you serious?  You can't possibly believe that I would imply that it's OK to be "sloppy" with my teammates.  I use my intended audience as a guide for when to limit my obsessive-compulsive attention to detail.

Are you telling me that it if you were presenting something to the CEO of your company, you wouldn't spend a more time making sure all of the i's where dotted, and the t's where crossed?

Having said that, I STILL believe, that I should do everything in my power to make all of my presentations as error free as possible.  Knowing my intended audience is how I decide when to stay up all night proof-reading. :)

RE: How proper is proper?

Your peers are better placed to judge the technical content and so are more likely to overlook spelling/grammar/presentation mistakes. Senior managers, sales people, etc may be less able to tell whether the technical content is correct and will subconsciously infer general intelligence and hence techical capability from the things they understand, e.g. spelling.

RE: How proper is proper?

melone,

Quote (melone):

Ashereng, are you serious?  You can't possibly believe that I would imply that it's OK to be "sloppy" with my teammates.

Quote (melone):

If I'm presenting a technical concept to my engineering peers, it is acceptable to misspell some words, or use poor grammer.  However, if I am attempting to convey the same "type" (not neccessarily the same level of detail) of information to upper management, typos & poor grammar detract from my credibility.

I don't know what you are implying. You posted that if you are presenting a technical concept to your engineering peers, it is acceptable to misspell some words and use poor grammar. I am merely going by your posting.


I do not believe it is acceptable to misspell some words, or to use poor grammar, depending on the audience. I think we should try to spell correctly, and use correct grammar, for all audiences.

I put in the same effort, and hence make the same mistakes, for all audiences.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: How proper is proper?

How curious.
Linguists will tell us that in our spoken language we all of us adopt different styles depending on our audience.
These range from formal to familiar.
No one pretends that in court, the language and manner of deliverey and the various respects shown by lawyers to the judge etc are the same manner they would use in everyday speech.
It is the same with all of us whether we are concious of it or not. Most often it relates to our relative status.
Different forms of written communication do reflect similar style changes and attantion to detail.
In this forum spelling and grammar inconsistencies are less likely to be commented on than in the language forum.

The reactions here though still seem to suggest that all written reports for internal conmsumption, for peer to peer review and for subordinate to superior as well as publications for public review all must have the same attention to detail and, presumably, style.
There also seems to be an asusmption that all mistakes are detectable by the author or are deliberately not corrected when detected.

I wonder how many who advocate absolutism without recomending a standard or a metric are as meticulaous in their spoken word?


JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: How proper is proper?

I think that there is a distinction between spoken and written usage.  In spoken usage, you know your audience, they're in the room with you or on the other end of the phone line.  In written usage, you may have an intended audience, but there is no way to know if that is the only audience, or to limit the dissemination of the work to that audience.  Therefore, it seems reasonable that written communications should have a higher standard of care than spoken.  It is also possible with written communications to proof read your work before sending it, in spoken communications you can only correct your self after the fact.

RE: How proper is proper?

Style can and should be different.  Writing for an audience of 6 yr olds is not the same as writing for your peers.  But, that doesn't and shouldn't mean that either audience should be cheated out of your attention to the details.

TTFN



RE: How proper is proper?

IRstuff,

That is the sentiment I am trying to convey (albeit, I conveyed mine less eloquently). Give you a star.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: How proper is proper?

What I believe to be worse is the 'management speak' that we are bombarded with by MBAs in today's reports. Countless reports that waffle on about nothing much,using longer words as they go. The multisyllable words are often misapplied anyhow.

Give me a few punctuation mistakes and misspelled words but in a clear and succinct manner anyday. Although , of course, one should try and fix the obvious mistakes.

Better the words be wrong than a calculation from which conclusions are drawn.

Geoffrey D Stone FIMechE C.Eng;FIEust CP Eng
www.waterhammer.bigblog.com.au

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