EECE 590 Writing Tips

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EECE 590 Writing Tips

• (How to avoid impressing your boss with your poor
  English)
• Ruth Douglas Miller, revised 31 Aug. 2007

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Punctuation, or How not to become a Laughingstock

• A panda enters a café and orders a sandwich. It
  sits down and eats it, then rising, pulls out a
  gun, fires two shots in the air and walks out.
• The baffled server asks, Why? and the panda
  tosses him a badly punctuated wildlife manual
  Im a panda. Look it up.
• Panda black-and-white bearlike mammal native to
  southern China. Eats, shoots and leaves.
• Joke paraphrased from Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots
  and Leaves, Gotham, 2004.

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Apostrophes usually possessive

• Its possessive the cat washed its tail.
• Its It is
• Singular the engineers calculator
• Plural Engineers calculators
• Plural acronym He had six MRIs done in three
  days.
• Possessive acronym The ASICs function in this
  circuit is

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Colons and Semicolons

• Colon usually for lists We discuss three types
  of amplifiers common base, common emitter and
  emitter follower.
• Semicolon Wherever a period would work but you
  dont wish to break the sentence the second
  sentence is closely related to the first. A
  colon is good if the second sentence explains or
  elaborates on the first.

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Inclusive Language

• they and their are plural pronouns!
• Use plural or neutral nouns if possible
  Engineers use their calculators
• Use he/she or he or she sparingly.
• Use his/hers for singular possessive.
• If you must frequently refer to single
  individuals, alternate between him and
  herbut not in the same sentence!

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Agreement Problems

• A company by name is singular Napster was shut
  down when its practices failed
• A team is singular The KSU basketball team lost
  its third game in a row
• This gets awkward The coach urged it to get its
  act together. Avoid by rewriting

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Agreement Problems 2

• The coach urged the team members to get their
  acts together.
• Napsters CEO made poor choices (Rather than
  It for Napster)

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Agreement Problems 3

• A consumer is (singular)
• A number of consumers are (plural)
• The number of consumers is (singular)

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Reasons and Because

• The reason for the failure was poor maintenance.
• The part failed because of poor maintenance.
• NOT the reason is because Redundant!

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Hyphens

• Use a hyphen between two adjectives if one
  modifies the other, rather than the ending noun
• transistor-based circuit
• small-engine repair shop a shop that repairs
  small engines, not a small shop that repairs
  engines.
• high-frequency signal

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Adverbs and Adjectives

• Words that modify a verb
• more cheaply, less easily
• Words that modify a noun
• cheaper, easier
• Guide take the more off, and see if it sounds
  right
• We can make this part more cheaply
• This method results in a cheaper part.

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Wrong Words

• I will cite Savannah River as a nuclear site that
  is not a pretty sight.
• Cite web sites with their URLs.
• KSU is NOT starting a program in navel
  engineering.
• A grammar checker may catch other errors be
  careful with fancy words whose meaning you may
  not be sure of.

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Wrong Words

• drought-like conditions are exasperating an
  ongoing problem (exacerbating)
• The servers are unstable please bare with us.
• The US penile system is overloaded. (penal)
• The child was naked from the waste down.
• the allergy brings out red whelps on her arms.
  (welts)
• This tow truck is equipped with two wenches.
• Paraphrases from James Kilpatrick, Beware the
  frumious homophone, Manhattan Mercury, Sunday, 5
  Dec, 2004

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More Wrong Words

• Heard of cattle?
• Steaks are high?
• Weather or not?
• Every fascist of teamwork!
• Wrong Computer chip manufacture Right Computer
  chip manufacturer

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Affect/Effect

• Affect is usually a verb A change in b affects
  the gain.
• Effect is usually a noun The effect of
  increasing b is
• Alternative usages are possible, though rare
  (specialized). A grammar checker may well miss
  the error.

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Dangling Modifiers

• Introductory participial phrase always refers to
  the nearest noun following
• As a mother of five, her washing machine was
  always running (prolific washer!)
• Wanting to do well, it seemed best to study.
  (who is it?)

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Abbreviations and Acronyms

• Always define at first use
• the number of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency
  Syndrome) patients has dropped
• I used only bipolar junction transistors (BJTs)
  in this circuit
• If in doubt, DEFINE!

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KISS

• Keep it simple, stupid!
• Dont use 5 syllables if three will do.
• Avoid convoluted sentences they are much easier
  to mess up.
• Avoid passive voice (use of to be verb in all
  its forms is, was, will be, were)
• Avoid dummy subject There is/are

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Concluding Remarks

• Read! Read, read, read!
• Read good stuff, not just technical stuff
• Get help ask someone competent to help you proof
  your work
• Do the work prior to an hour before it is due, so
  you have time to proof it.
• Thank you for caring about your work!