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Website English and Units

 
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Mark



Joined: 07 Jan 2009
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 12:55 am    Post subject: Website English and Units Reply with quote

I'm really enjoying the site - but it is distressing to see poor English (FAQs does not have an apostrophe) and units that are not SI ( ie deg F). While I understand the US centric nature of the universe for those who live there, for engineers one would have thought that both of these issues are important. And not all of us live in the US and understand non SI units.....
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Michael Chu



Joined: 10 May 2005
Posts: 1654
Location: Austin, TX (USA)

PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 3:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm not really sure how to respond to this... As an engineer, I'm more interested in getting things done and done properly. Is my English so poor that the instructions, reviews, or information confusing? Also, every article I've written in the last two years (and possibly 3 years) has both US and SI measurements. What more do people want from me?

When I quit my job and don't have anything else to do, I'll fix everything.
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Mark



Joined: 07 Jan 2009
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:28 pm    Post subject: SI units etc Reply with quote

Well, it was in the US that they managed to load a 737 in pounds of fuel and the pilot thought it was kilos - and they managed to get one one of the martian landers lost due to a similar mixup.

Having said that, I doubt if that degree of criticality enters food.....

I have a great bread book - but ALL of its units are in "Imperial" (curious term for what the US now uses) - and I don't have an oven or a meat thermometer that measures in deg F - and this is how the rest of the world works. That's what SI means - something we ALL use. (My most hated US measurement in cooking is a "stick" of butter...how hard is it to use grams!)

It's important to be correct in scientific (and in day to day) English so that the idea or facts that you are trying to communicate are done without confusion and with the minimum words. Apostrophes are part of this. Seeing an apostrophe makes one look for either a missing letter or an ownership of something, not a plural. It's confusing (like the use of non SI units) . And one would like to think that on an engineering website that would be an anathema.
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Dilbert



Joined: 19 Oct 2007
Posts: 1304
Location: central PA

PostPosted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

>>but ALL of its units are in "Imperial" (curious term for what the US now uses)

you might want to rethink that. it's incorrect.

>>and this is how the rest of the world works
don't vacation in the US; problem solved.
emigration is obviously ruled out, outright.

seriously, if you're intelligent enough to use a computer, much less a search engine, and cannot cope with different customs, practices and (heaven forefend!) a typo - or even outright grammatical ignorance.... well, you need a different internet.
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Mark



Joined: 07 Jan 2009
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 12:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dear Michael

You've taken this a bit seriously. I've never used a blog site before, and it's interesting to see how serious these discussions can get!! It's always sport to have a go at the isolationist world of the US but it's a bit like shooting fish in barrel - but it's not a personal criticism.

It's a great site. I've "cooked' the gravlax and have a big chunk in the fridge (the preservation chemistry is interesting, it's not in the "bible" (McGee), but can be found elsewhere). It's just that unfortunate grammar and spelling on websites reduces their believability, and this site deserves better, although the FAQ's error is very common. I love the tabulated way of presenting recipes, although my son (a process design engineer) says this is not an uncommon way of showing task processing.

Keep up the good work....
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