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?
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?
RE: How proper is proper?
Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091
RE: How proper is proper?
RE: How proper is proper?
RE: How proper is proper?
RE: How proper is proper?
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?
RE: How proper is proper?
Brian
RE: How proper is proper?
"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?
Brian
RE: How proper is proper?
I appologise to everyone for leading us into this "Cambridge spelling" morass again.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: How proper is proper?
RE: How proper is proper?
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: How proper is proper?
RE: How proper is proper?
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?
B.E.
RE: How proper is proper?
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?
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?
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?
IMO.
RE: How proper is proper?
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?
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?
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?
RE: How proper is proper?
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?
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?
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?
RE: How proper is proper?
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: How proper is proper?
RE: How proper is proper?
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?
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?
Still, I do like a perfect(?) document.
RE: How proper is proper?
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?
RE: How proper is proper?
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?
RE: How proper is proper?
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 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?
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.
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?
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?
RE: How proper is proper?
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?
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?
RE: How proper is proper?
TTFN
RE: How proper is proper?
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?
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