Technical Writing Pet Peeves

1
Technical Writing Pet Peeves

• Dr. Biber
• 4/26/04

2
Apostrophe

• Doesnt signal that an S is coming!
• Possessive its and plurals do not use
  apostrophes.
• The best material for this purpose is Nomex.
  Its flammability rating is V0.
• The emissivity values range from 0.8 to 0.95.

3
Fancy Words

• Keep language concise
• Substitute simpler phrases
• In order to to
• Takes the value of equals
• As can be seen in the figure the figure
  shows that
• Attempt to try try
• More diminutive smaller

4
More Fancy Words

• Thin film coatings are being considered for use
  as solar selective coatings.
• The key to such collectors is the use of cermet
  coatings.
• Flat plate collectors are the most commonly used
  arrangement for domestic systems and as such will
  form the largest section of this information.

5
Sentence fragments or runons

• Sunstrip solar fins are available with highly
  selective AnodicCobalt or semi-selective black
  paint surface finished 12 mm or 8 mm copper
  waterway cut and inflated to your specified
  length.
• Traditional collectors consist of a number of
  copper tubes, known as risers are orientated
  vertically with respect to the collector and
  placed in thermal contact with a dark colored,
  metal absorbing plate.

6
Grammatical Inconsistency

• Complete sentences not always necessary
• Each bullet should have same grammatical
  construction
• This is achieved by
• Measuring and analyzing the solar radiation
• Developing new ceramic thin films
• Analyze and model the performance

7
No Information Added

• Durability the anodic-cobalt surface is very
  durable particularly at high temperatures.
• Measurements have been taken at over 30 sites
  for a number of years.
• As previously stated

8
Comprise and Compose

• Comprise bring together
• Compose make up
• Comprises is composed of
• Thin films comprised of molecular mixtures of
  metal and dielectric

9
Homonyms

• Spell-check doesnt catch this type of error
• Read carefully!
• Of coarse / of course
• There / their
• Its / its
• Where / wear
• Lead / led