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Spelling "Misteaks"
10

Spelling "Misteaks"

Spelling "Misteaks"

(OP)
Oftentimes I am confronted with words that just don't look right.  References to various dictionaries often don't help.  Just wondering whether there is a consensus for:

1. plural of bus - busses or buses (I tend to use busbars!)
2. time current curves that don't work resulting in "maloperations" or is it "misoperations"
3. Amps - I was once told by a teacher long ago that anyone who has a unit of measurement named after them, should have the honour of the name being both Capitalized and NOT shortened.  Thus the proper terms: Watt-second vs watt-second, Ampere vs Amp or amp, Hertz vs hertz (Hz OK).

If you have any others, I'd like to hear about them.  Also, as geography/culture oftentimes bears some role in our spelling, please provide your "connection".  I, by the way, am from Canada.

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

1.  I prefer buses, although my dictionary says buses or busses.  Maybe someone knows what the IEEE Standard Dictionary of Electrical and Electronics Terms says.
2.  Misoperations.  IMHO anyone using maloperations is guilty of malpractice.
3.  It may not be honorable, but the standard for metric units is to always begin them with a lower-case letter, except for Celsius.  I don't know why Anders Celsius rates more honor than Andre Marie Ampere.  The symbols of metric units begin with a small letter except where the symbol is derived from the name of a person, e.g. ampere or A and meter or m.  Amp is not a standard abbreviation.

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

2
NIST used to allow you to see their style guide, but it's now locked up for some reason.

Their page on SI units shows that the written unit is lower case not matter where it comes from.  The capitalization occurs only in the symbol itself, hence ampere becomes A and kelvin becomes K, while meters and other units are lower case symbols.

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/units.html

TTFN

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Forgot to mention that the same page goes into some detail as to special notation for "degree Celcius" as the unit name and the symbol being the degree symbol followed by a capital C.  Therefore, it is indeed the only unit where a capitalized name is used in the naming of the unit.

TTFN

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

2
It's refreshing to see an interest in maintaining standards in the most basic form of engineering … namely the notation of units. You were correctly informed with regard to the units when named for the individual influential in their development ... although the official convention is for the unit abbreviation (ie; Hz, W, F, etc) to be capitalised, yet the complete word, to avoid confusion with a persons surname, is not capitalised.

Check the website http://info.ex.ac.uk/cimt/dictunit/dictunit.htm, which has a detailed history of units, and is an excellent reference site for measurement.

On your specific numbered questions, I have used 'buses', but it's not generally used in the plural form, to be grammatically correct, it would actually be 'many bus', but then English is a flexible language and has developed to suit. With regard to 'mal-' or 'mis-operations', I've used 'mal-operations', yet haven't considered the grammatical correctness of the term. It is common here in New Zealand, which is largely based on British systems.

Internationally the use of non-standard terms has become commonplace, and the case you've quoted, with 'Amps' is one of the most prolific. The singular AND plural form is ampere, or A, being 1 ampere (1 amp!) or 300 ampere, as 300 amps translates to 300 amperes, which is meaningless, as the unit has no different plural form.
 
This compares with examples like 'celsius', whereby it is commonly understood that 273oC is not 273 degree celsius's, but 'degrees celsius'. The use of a surname in units excludes the use of it in a plural form, which makes sense.

This has some logic when writing for example Ampere's ampere, it is clear what is being communicated, whereas if the unit were capitalised, and a plural form permitted, it becomes Ampere's Ampere's, which defies grammatical sense.

I hope this helps and contributes to the correct use of technical English.

Kevin

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

- both are correct but I prefer "busses"...it looks better.
- definitely "misoperations"
- "amperes" is the proper term, but "amps" is also correct as it has been established through common usage.

Michael Sidiropoulos
Transmission Planning Engineer

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

(OP)
Michael Sidiropoulos:

Where are you from please?

Thanks,
Ken

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

The dictionary says busses and buses are both appropriate.  Just remember that buss is another word for kiss.  So, busses also means kisses.  

I prefer buses, misoperations, and amps.  

I am just a heathen American and would not know proper English if it slapped me upside the head.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  When life gives you grenades, well....

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

khodges, the apostrophe police will get you for your "Ampere's Ampere's"!  Perhaps you meant "Ampere's Amperes"?

Bung
Life is non-linear...

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

KenAlmon:
Originally from Greece, currently in Portland, Oregon.

Michael Sidiropoulos
Transmission Planning Engineer

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

It is usual practice (thank God, somehow I resisted writing practise-check similar Thread731-40551) to write those units derived (I mean literally not technically) from a person's name with capital letter in the beginning. Only exception is the unit 'Litre' or 'Liter' which starts with a capital letter. (or I was told so and if you insist to use small letter...go ahead)But I never heard anything against shortcuts.

I personally feel there is no precedence to language in technology. (Dumb Charades? strictly no)

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

And those are the correct writtten usages according to the National Institute of Standards and Testing.  "A" is the symbol for the unit and ampere is the name of the unit.

TTFN

TTFN

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Suggestion: Reference:
1. ANSI/IEEE Std 945-1984 IEEE Recommended Practice for Preferred Metric Units for Use in Electrical and Electronics Science and Technology.
(Apparently, Science is to be interpreted Applied Science=Engineering to have some meaning of this standard in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Design, Construction, etc.)
SI Unit System shows:
W-Watt
V-Volt
A-Ampere
VA-voltampere
T-Tesla
C-Celsius
K-Kelvin
H-Henry
Hz-Hertz
S-Siemens
N-Newton
Pa-Pascal
Wb-Weber
J-joule
etc.
m-meter
L-liter
g-gram
s-second
etc.
k=kilo, K=Kelvin, not to be mixed
m=mili, M=Mega, not to be mixed
===============================
buses is American English
busses is British English
maloperation, malfunction, maltreatment, etc.
misoperation?, misconduct, misinterpretation, misapplication, etc.
mis-bad, amiss, badly, wrongly, unfavorably, etc.
mal-bad, ill, evil, wrong; defective, imperfect; signifying simple negation, and forming words directly from Latin and mediately through French
Maloperation is in the dictionary, misoperation is not in the dictionary (at least not in a small one)

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

I don't have a copy of IEEE-945... could you verify the temperature unit?  NIST Special Publication 330, 2001 ed., "The International System of Units (SI)" on page 7, paragraph 2.1.1.5 Unit of thermodynamic temperature (kelvin) defines the kelvin as the fundamental unit of temperature:  

"The kelvin, unit of thermodynamic temperature, is the fraction 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water....

The unit of Celcius temperature is the degree Celcius,°C, which is by definition equal in magnitude to the kelvin."

Since both ANSI and IEEE are supposed to adhere to SI definitions generated by CIPM, I find it odd that an ANSI/IEEE document would define a lone C as the SI unit, particularly when other ANSI and IEEE documents use the correct °C symbol.

TTFN

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

hi all
 mis operation & mal operation. noweyesjuzthinkin, Its strange that I really don't ever recall hearing or seeing those words in a work place we allways seem to say some thing along the lines of incorrect operation or malfunction

Given that English is not latin but a dynamic "living" language the use of phrases such as amps is not correct but will be one day.

Yeh kelvin is the base scale but C is the normal engineering unit even in those countries where a cold day is given as 65
 It is a 60 amp load gets you out of trouble with the s

PS its colour not bloody well color
PPS another common phrase for mal operation is F**** upped but that may take a while to get into the dictionaries though

All the best
Don

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

oops sorry
im from Australia and we are proud to mangle any ones language
Sohavagooddaymatewhatchyarekon
Don

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Not to get completely quagmired in nitnoids, but the official SI unit for Celsius temperature is °C, not just C

TTFN

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

HI all
IRstuff your right, it is  little o &C but until I figure out how to get it to appear on this dang thing with out shutting down the application or some other horrid disaster I'm going to cheat and say I really meant centigrade (does that still exist?)

An interesting observation today, We are finnishing our annual shut down and most of the crew wound up in the main incoming switch room looking at the state of our bus bars. (they are just fine a little bit dusty though)

I asked each team member in turn "what do you call those things" 100% (found that key) said "busbars". When I asked them what about busses they said that's the thing going down the road. Now thats not meant to be definitive just an interesting observation.

What about some of the other members are there other local phrases.

Regards to all
Don

ps I put a star onya IRstuff cause ya gotme fair & square

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Thanks, the keycode for °C is to hold the <ALT> key down and type 0176 on the keypad.  Many of the other similar formatted characters can be found the Character Map application in Windoze.  The Character Map shows you the hexcode, which you have to convert to decimal and prepend with a 0. It's a GOOD thing...



TTFN

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

don01, if you want colour and not color, then I expect better grammar from you.  It is supposed to be you're not your in your reply addressing IRstuff.

Cheers.

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

sorry Lewish
 me mum said I was better edyamicated than that. I normally read these posts a couple of times and fix up the worst of my errors that one slipped by me (again) believe me you don't want to see my first type throughs yech!!

IRstuff thanks for that. yet another star and heart felt too. The degree thing has given me a bad time for many many years and often raised my blood temp by many °C Ihave now stuck that on the side of my monitor with the other clues I keep handy. An interesting thing happened when I tried it -- if I use the keys on top of the letters (qwerty....) it doesn't work but on the number pad it does ???? is this normal.

another terminology anomaly, we don't use Y delta starters we have star delta starters. how do these differences develop.? not saying right or wrong but the changes for locations are fascinating.

All the best
Don

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

hi all back again
IRstuff
I was just doing a bit of a poke around the SI site in france BIPM.org and did a search on style  -- guess what took me to NIST and I pulled down the html style page. The pdf version failed to down load properly but that could be me.

Try www.BIPM.org and search "style" or
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/units/rules.html

this might be a back door way of getting the info
Regards
Don

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Don,

Thanks for the info.  

The link http://physics.nist.gov/Document/sp811.pdf appears to be working, at least on my end.  I actually found my copy of SP811 when I tried to download the PDF file this morning, doh!

TTFN

TTFN

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

I'm finding this thread very interesting and entertaining  as a pedant who insists on the proper English spelling of words such as 'colour'.

Celsius is the 'new' SI replacement for Centigrade.

The way I get things like 'º', 'µ', '½' and others into my posts is to use the Windows character map (Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Character map).  I've created a shorcut to it on my Desktop.  When I want a special character for a post it's a simple matter of minimizing¹ the window, clicking on the character map, selecting the character, copying it to the clipboard, then returning to the post and pasting it in.  This is actually simpler than it sounds.

¹ The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary, 1993 edition.

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

(OP)
This thread is taking on a life of it's own.  Based on the popularity, I am now going to "triple-check" my spelling and grammar before I post!

All good comments - thanks for the enthusiastic response.

IRStuff - star to you for the PDF reference, speaking of which, to contrast with earlier posts by jghrist and IRStuff, please note the following from the NIST SI Manual:

Page 12 talks about capitalization as follows:

"6.1.2 Capitalization
Unit symbols are printed in lower-case letters except that:
(a) the symbol or the first letter of the symbol is an upper-case letter when the name of the unit is
derived from the name of a person; and..."

Page 31 appears to disagree:

"9.5 Spelling unit names obtained by division
When the name of a derived unit formed from other units by division is spelled out, the word ‘‘per’’ is used and not a solidus. (See also Secs. 6.1.7 and 9.8.)
Example : ampere per meter (A/m) but not : ampere/meter"

while the definition section:

"A.5 Ampere (9th CGPM, 1948)
The ampere is that constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross section, and placed 1 meter apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 x 10 -7 newton per meter of length."

Confusing isn't it!!

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Hi Busbar,

Try ã from either the Unicode or DOS: US character sets in the character map.  To save scanning through all the symbols you can simply ask for a search, in this case "square root".

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

It's confusing because they're actually talking about different things.  

The NIST manual talks about unit names and unit symbols.  The name for the unit of current is the lower-case ampere, while the symbol for the unit of current is the upper-case A.  So unit names are almost all lower case, while unit symbols are a mix of upper and lower case, depending on whether it's derived from a proper name.

The exception as noted in the appendix is the unit name for temperature being "degrees Celcius" with the unit symbol as °C.  So in this case, both the name and symbol are capitalized.

Reponding to an earlier post, the <ALT> keycodes appear to wired for the keypad only, and that's because the keypad actually sends a different keycode than the typewrite key equivalent.  If I remember correctly, the keypad sends an <ALT> as part of the keycode directly.

TTFN

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Oops (pardon my poor english).  Although the 'root' symbol came up properly on my computer, it obviously didn't make it through the system.  My apologies busbar.  Next time I'll preview the post before submitting it.  We may be stuck with x^½.

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"


ve7 — Fortunately, it does show up in preview.
  

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Here's another stinker: ohm.  Try it in ASCII (234) and you get Û.  Try it in Unicode (ohm) gets: Ω, DOS: Greek (Omega) gets Ω and Windows: Greek (Omega) gets Ω.  The last three all show properly in the preview.

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Hey! It works!

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

I had just turned off a window capture program which was running in the background.  I wonder if it was causing problems.  I'll try square root again to see what happens now. ã - still doesn't work, although the capture program was was causing problems with ohm.

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

To get the characters you don't need those numeric codes.

You can use sympol codes deg, alpha, beta, gamma, omega, etc
You just have to put an & in front, enclose it in ignore tags, and put semicolon after the whole thing.

Somthing like this:
[snignore]"&"deg[/snignore];
except it's ignore, not snignore... and no quotes... I had to change it a little to convey the code rather than the symbol. Here is the results:

°;
α
β
γ
ω


RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

hi  all
 here I sit on a sunday morning reading engineering posts. What has happened to my life?
IRstuff - I'll have another go at getting the style pdf now I'm happy it can come down.

I've thrown some more stars around here 'cause I now have about 4 ways to get symbols lost to me since cpm was a baby.
and I feel really good that I'm not the only person who suffers for symbols and spelling.
KenAlmon, watch out, the grammar police are coming; "triple check" has to be worth a fine of at least 3 stars ? (typed with a laugh)

Regards
Don

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Suggestions (related to ANSI/IEEE 945-1984):
1. K-Kelvin SI Symbol (Unit) is aligned with the thermodynamic temperature.
Typical and Recommended Applications and Explanatory Notes: Thermodynamic calculations, radiative heat transfer measurements, noise temperature in radio receivers. Note: The name degree kelvin and symbol °K are no longer used.
2. Celsius temperature. SI Symbol (Unit) °C (degree Celsius)
3. Temperature interval: K (kelvin) or °C (degree Celsius)
4. Milli [m] = 0.001
(It is spelled with two ll not one. This is my correction. I beg your pardon.)
  

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Note that according to the NIST manual, section 9.2, "300 amperes" is correct.

 

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Hi Don01.  There are times when I too wish for the good old days of CPM and the flexibility we enjoyed with our computers.

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

ve7brz
  So do I then I start remembering using pip, programs that wouldn't transfer from one mc to the other, sitting up till 2 am trying to make a dynamic "propellor" turn on the screen with esc codes and 8x8 work sheets to decode (code??) shapes and characters, but it was more fun and basic (pardon the pun) maybe the hands on thing??.

  On the subject of words and bus /ses /es/ just bus / We talk of bus bars as the metal things with electricity in them. Bus ways as the housing or space containing them and bus clamps as the things to hold them in place connecting to bus ties. I am suspecting ( and that doesn't sound right)that may be the correct way is singular bus with plural desciption, How does this sit with the vernacular in the northern climes.

Regards
Don

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

Suggestion to IRstuff (Aerospace) Jan 9, 2003 marked ///\\\
Thanks, the keycode for °C is to hold the <ALT> key down and type 0176 on the keypad.
///This does not work with MSWinXP Pro. It works with MSWin98 and lower.\\\
  Many of the other similar formatted characters can be found the Character Map application in Windoze.
///This is what I use with MSWinXP Pro.\\\
  The Character Map shows you the hexcode, which you have to convert to decimal and prepend with a 0. It's a GOOD thing...
///Not with MSWinXP Pro.\\\

RE: Spelling "Misteaks"

jbartos,

Sorry...;-(

There must be something different with your XP.  I'm running XP Home Ed on 1.8G P4°°°° as I type this...

As far as I know there were no mods made to the OS.

TTFN

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