Latter always

Agreed. The former just seem lazy.

The one that make my hair stand on end is colium. I actually cringe when I hear that. Luckily now there's minimal face to face interaction so no one needs to see my face when I hear it.

Have you ever browsed through the DARE (Dictionary of Regional American English)?
https://www.daredictionary.com/
While some of these may not make technical or grammatical sense, some of them do follow speech patterns that are common in some parts of the country. And it often those patterns that drive our speech.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy

I always say "screened in porch".

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"Footer" and "colyum" are two of my pet peeves.

I am portuguese, explain me the contextual significance of "Drop Beam" or "Dropped Beam" ?
"Screen Porch" or "Screened Porch" ?
"Footer" or "Footing" ?
get me a phrase with each Slang/Jargon above please. Thank you

luis marques

Drop is a verb. Dropped is the past particle of a the verb, which is often used as an adjective.
See also the common American term "Skim milk", which is a pet peeve of mine.

Steve

Yes I know to drop involves liquids spread in small drops, but “to drop beam” is emphatic. Does it mean a unexpected fall down?

luis

Drop beam, screen porch etc are used by the same people that use thru' instead of through.

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)

what does "screen porch means"? my dear experts or consultants.

A "screened porch" is an outdoor area, generally attached to a residence, which is surrounded by fine mesh screening to repel insects like flies and mosquitos.

A screened porch does not repel insects, it excludes them. They are still right out there trying to get in, not repelled in the least.

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"...which is surrounded by fine mesh screening to repel insects like flies and mosquitos."

I'll allow it. [spoken like a judge who has final authority (from my position of zero authority) ]

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/en...

Quote:

repel
American English
1. to drive or force back; hold or ward off
to repel an attack

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

Hodor! Hodor!

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Last time I was in Hawaii, I saw lots of signs for shave ice. Only one advertised shaved ice, Haole owned I expect.

Thanks, Pete. That was my first attempt at defining a screened porch, and I disremendered that in this forum it is necessary to repel pedants.

I'm not going to touch that with a 10-ft screen...

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The other one that really bugs me is "Advance", when the author really means "Advanced".

And then I get annoyed, because what they are describing isn't "advanced", it is at best "contemporary" or "state of the art".

Steve

The irony of engineers having a discussion about English!

I remember, as a freshman at Lehigh U, "The Engineers" back then, how many freshmen had to take remedial English (and math to a lesser extent). I've probably forgotten more that I've remembered, but I bless that battle axe, Mrs. DeTurk, who drilled into us "miserable seniors full of senioritus" the English we had failed to properly learn. If you can't retain it, have you really learned it?

As far as Slang/Jargon goes, I cringe at "irregardless," since that word would mean "not without regard, which is the negative of how it is usually intended.

Beyond that, I've enjoy auditing the banter above, pedantic or not, with a twinkle in my eye, at thoughts of water cooler repartee of times past.

Skip,

_{Just traded in my OLD subtlety...
for a NUance!}

Here's a couple more to consider:

screen door vs screened door;
drop panel vs dropped panel.

While proper English suggest the later is correct, I never seen or heard the later used.

latter?

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SkipVought, what year did you graduate from Lehigh? My class was '63.

Ted

1966

Skip,

_{Just traded in my OLD subtlety...
for a NUance!}

wannabeSE

screen or screened door, both are correct in the right context, as is drop panel or dropped panel .

ie, a screen door in a door that has been screened to add protection.

Screen door - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
A screen door can refer to a hinged storm door (cold climates) or hinged screen door (warm climates) covering an exterior door, or a screened sliding door used with sliding glass doors

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)

Things that make me crazy:
-Calling any wide flange member a "beam" regardless of use/orientation.
-Calling spherical pressure vessels "spears".
-Using the term "torqued/torquing" for tightening bolts when one really means "tensioned/tensioning".
-Using screw and bolt interchangeably and/or backwards.
-Spelling numbers 0 < x <= 9 then using digits above that... I don't care what our grammar teachers said way back when, numbers are made of digits, not letters (even in hex or something like that, the letters function as digits)

Shouldn’t you start with calling a wide flange an “I-beam”?

A 'Wide Flange Beam' or 'W Shape' is NOT the same as an 'I-Beam', also sometimes called an 'S Shape', and it has to do with the size AND shape of the flanges, as shown below:



Also, in most cases, the flange on an 'I-Beam', as compared to the height of the beam, is generally not as wide as would be the case with the 'Wide Flange Beam', which I guess is part of the reason why they call it a 'Wide Flange Beam' in the first place.

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-Using the term "torqued/torquing" for tightening bolts when one really means "tensioned/tensioning".

We don't have tension wrenches; we have torque wrenches; they measure torque applied to bolts. So torquing a bolt is what you are doing, since that's measurable, while the induced tension is not.

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An I beam is part of the front suspension of your Ford PickEmUp Truck. And good luck finding an alignment shop that still knows how to adjust it.

On the subject of 'torquing' bolts: I once had a contractor tell me that they were unable to activate the DTI (direct tension indicator) washers in some connection, even though they had "blue torqued" the nuts. I asked, "what do you mean 'blue torqued'?" He said "you know...yank on the wrench 'til you're blue in the face". We decided that was not an acceptable metric of torque (or tension).

Some others (as this appears to have turned into a list of our pet peeves...) are:

Worse case vs. worst case.
Footer vs. footing.
Masonary vs. masonry. (why....how...?!)
Cement vs. concrete.
Epoxy vs. adhesive (not always interchangeable).
Suspended slab vs. elevated slab.
Sheer vs. shear.
Stirrups vs. ties/hoops (column/wall application)
Ties/hoops vs. stirrups (beam application) I believe there is an entire thread dedicated to this one...
Tor-jzhun vs. tor-shin.
Joistuses (???) vs. joists.
Rafter vs. joist. (ceiling application)
# 1 vs. #1
ha ha vs. haha
??? vs. ? (Shop drawing review, for example. ??? at the end of a correction seems like an accusation)
And for the love of all that is holy: 2020.27.04 vs. 2020.04.27!!!!! The latter (amazingly!?!) will allow file folders or pdfs or whatever to be in the correct order. The former will cause absolute chaos and anger.

Latter or bust...

Actually we use 200427 to minimize impact on file/folder name length

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Quote (The one that make my hair stand on end is colium.)

or joises (sp?)

Dik

Crush and Run is another one of my favorites (Crusher Run)

@Dold - I say both "Suspended Slab" and "Elevated Slab".

I recently heard the use of simular for similar.

Ted

percaution instead of precaution

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The new usage that sets my teeth on edge is "Ten times less than..." Are people so math-phobic they can't say "One tenth of..."

My glass has a v/c ratio of 0.5

Maybe the tyranny of Murphy is the penalty for hubris. - http://xkcd.com/319/

au contraire; it's actually consistent with the converse "ten times more than" and it's more of a math/logic problem, since you have to parse "more/less" into a ratio problem.

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Not just a ratio, since less and more express subtraction and addition. 10 times more means 11X. 10 times less yields -9X.

Anytime I multiply any value by a number greater than one, I expect the result to be greater than or more than not less than the original value.

Ted

I took my kid to a maple syrup making demonstration. The presenter was explaining the process of making holes in the bark to set the spiles. He stated his preference for the "old school" technique, holding up a brace and augur. But he referred to the tool as a "brazen bit." I initially assumed that this was just a pronunciation difference, but no, the printed pamphlet specifically referred to the brace and bit as a "brazen bit."

Does anyone else call bolt cutters "mojos"?

Maybe the brazen bit was named after his girl friend.

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)

When our brazen bit works ooh! My God!

Could it be that the bits were made of Brass? A hundred years or so ago, the word 'brazen' was often used to describe something made of Brass.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Yes brass!

And why are diagonal wire cutters called dikes?

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Sounds likes something derived from another language, however, I found this in Wikipedia:

Diags or dikes (a portmanteau of "diagonal cutters") is jargon used especially in the US electrical industry, to describe diagonal pliers.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

aks vs ask

I was watching Hamish MacBeth last night, with closed captioning on due to the heavy Scottish ascents. A man asked for a brace and bit, at least that's what he received. The CC said brazen bit. Googling the phrase brings up several tool references. Link

CC is almost always done solely by ear, without regard to context or even understanding of what was said; there are almost always something off with CC of live broadcast. Youtube has auto-generated CC, which is even sloppier.

Even when CC is done post-production, as in a movie or TV show, the actors/directors often go off script, so CC doesn't match in those cases as well. Or worse, the spoken language isn't even English, but someone CC'd it for English, and the neither the English dub nor CC match what was originally said in the original language

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