MEW 342

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

I was very pleased to see the article by Richard Lofting

… not that I have an ML10 but because it is well-presented, and easily scalable to smaller machines.

One disappointment though … the “description” of Fig.1

< sigh >

MichaelG.

[Andrew SkinnerParticipant @andrewskinner94774]

I was just about to start my own thread on a similar theme, having subscribed for a year now.

The articles don’t appear to be proofread. On the page referred to above, from a brief scan, I counted 7 SPAG mistakes. I wasn’t sure what the phrase, “my son is a mechanic for stock” meant, either.

This is not a criticism of the author, but of the editorial team responsible for the finished product.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Newspapers and magazines laid off all the proofreaders decades ago as a cost-saving measure. And the “editorial team” is down to one lone elf in his grotto somewhere in Wales, I believe. It is notoriously difficult to proofread your own work. You simply don’t see your own mistakes.

 

[Andrew SkinnerParticipant @andrewskinner94774]

That all sounds reasonable, especially the point about proofreading your own work. Some of the errors are pretty obvious, though: there are three comma splices in the first column, for example. These sorts of things, along with the mis-captioned picture, would be so easy to correct.

I was going to offer my services, having done some proofreading work in the past. It’s mainly a quality issue, but sometimes it affects the content in a more meaningful way: even Google can’t tell me what a “mechanic for stock” is. In this sort of case, I’d contact the author for clarification.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

It seemed to me he was saying he can get plenty of stock of aluminium in the form of discarded water pumps and the like from his son who is a motor mechanic.

The wrong caption has all the hallmarks of a pic that was changed in a hurry at the last minute. The pic got done but the caption did not. It is the kind of thing that makes editors wake up at 3am and shriek “Damn!”, but by then the press is rolling…

[Andrew SkinnerParticipant @andrewskinner94774]

Thanks. I’d suggest:

”Aluminium melts at a lower temperature than (b)ronze, so (is) slightly safer(. I) can get my hands on loads of alloy castings such as water pumps (), (for stock), as my son is a mechanic.”

I wondered, briefly, if “stock” could be a synecdoche for “rolling stock”, i.e., trains, so he’s a train mechanic. It is a model engineer magazine, after all.

I don’t mean to single out this poor chap’s article for criticism; it just happens to be the one open in front of me, and representative of the wider problem.

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

My reading of it, was that the picture should have been of a tractor referred to as Photo 1. There was no reference that I could see to a Figure 1.

For some reason spelling/proof reading errors always jump out at me.  I had some documentation re my very recent prostate surgery and this had errors in it, other documentation had very poor layout such that several sections overlapped when printed.

I did see a number of typo errors in the mag, e.g. P43, Part 16 would appear to be a Guld Finger.

Colin

[Andrew SkinnerParticipant @andrewskinner94774]

Same here – errors jump out at me too. You could argue that minor SPAG errors are not worth bothering about. There is, I would suggest, always a benefit to having another set of eyes pass over your writing.

A few months ago, there was a series of three articles by a chap called, I think, Jacques. It was about sharpening taps, and involved some inventive grinding.

There was commentary in another forum, from some users who had read the first article, but didn’t have the faintest clue what was being done. I must admit, I had to read the article twice to divine that he was chopping off the hard-working end of the tap, then re-grinding the taper to make a fresher end. The confusion came from the lack of an introduction or overview saying just that.

The author launches straight into an account of tap clearance angles – alpha, beta and so forth. Just like with proofreading your own work for SPAG, it sometimes takes that other pair of eyes to point out these things.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Thank the Lord for Google. I had no idea what a SPAG error or a comma splice were, and I’ve been speaking English for over 70 years. Before using acronyms and techy terms which the readers probably won’t understand, a definition would help.

[Andrew SkinnerParticipant @andrewskinner94774]

A fair point; there’s that second set of eyes!

I thought SPAG was reasonably well known as standing for spelling, punctuation and grammar, but I would concede that a comma splice is more of a niche term, many readers wouldn’t spot one. (That last bit is a comma splice: a comma is used where a new sentence should be started, or in place of a semicolon, for example).

That said, if I were writing an article on the subject I would expand more on the details. My style on forum posts is briefer and more conversational. Standard paragraphs in forum posts appear as big blocks of text that often don’t get read. As you see, I tend to split them up, following some advice from an old hand at the Physics Forums.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

SPAG usually proceeds BOL in my house.

Neil gets paid X amount to produce the mag to which he devotes a certain amount of time. If he got paid X+ or paid hourly then he may have more time to sort the SPAG from the BOL but that would put the cost of your magazines up.

I do sometimes send my articles to a third person to read them through as I’ve always had problems with spelling and Engilsh but still happy to contribute where I can. As long as most readers know what you are on about the odd bit of SPAG can be put up with and I’d rather see that than people being put off sending things into the mag for fear of criticism.

[Andrew SkinnerParticipant @andrewskinner94774]

Yes, the cost issue was raised earlier. I hope my comments and offer of services come across as constructive, rather than derogatory. I’d certainly not want anyone to be put off submitting articles.

It could be argued that someone might be encouraged to have a go at an article, being previously hesitant, because there’s a proofreader in-house to sort out the details they’re not good at.

Edit: Yes, I have been VERY careful in writing these posts! There’s nothing worse than picking at someone’s English, then being skewered for your own mistakes.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that everybody and his cat will instantly spot errors completely invisible to authors and editors!

Most likely reason is familiarity – writers autodetect what should be there, and don’t see mistakes.   Thus, the many hero to zero examples where people write in to complain about shoddy proof-reading, only to find they’ve blundered too!

Cruel world, and always has been.  From the Wicked Bible, of 1631:

Had to look up SPAG.  Was introduced into Britain’s Primary Schools in 2013, and should be rendered ‘SPaG’.    Typical Nanny State rubbish: absolutely nothing wrong with “Reading, Riting, and Rithmatic”.

🙂

Dave

 

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I also seem to remember reading that if writing something and using a little used or known abbreviation that it was good practice to spell it out in full first time. We will put that one down to familiarity with some being more familiar than others.

[Andrew SkinnerParticipant @andrewskinner94774]

Again, forum post style versus published article style.

Why should poor old “and” not get its own capital letter? It’s as good a word as any other!

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Time is also another factor that can make it difficult to get an article proofread.

For example, Neil emailed me on Friday about 4.00 pm enquiring whether I had another part to complete the current series of articles. I said I could do one more and he left it with me provided I could get it back to him by the middle of this week. I had the photos already, wrote the text over the weekend as well as making  a video and transferred all that to him this morning. He has already found the space for it and will have wrapped up that issue in the next couple of days.

So unless something can be proofread almost by return it would not be practical for some articles. There are also other articles that are not easy to proofread, take the thread milling one in the same mag for example, unless the proofreader knows their G-code it would be almost impossible to spot a mistake. Gone are the days of an editorial office and various “technical editors” with knowledge of specific subjects.

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

I also seem to remember reading that if writing something and using a little used or known abbreviation that it was good practice to spell it out in full first time. We will put that one down to familiarity with some being more familiar than others.

That has been in most style guides forever, and is essential for initialisms.

[Andrew SkinnerParticipant @andrewskinner94774]

With a forum post, you can just look up the meaning, not necessarily true of a printed article.

There are lots of initialisms used on here and similar places without definition:

DRO

VFD

DAMHIKT

OTOH

RTFM

Do you want me to define that last one? 😉

[Andrew Skinner]

On Andrew Skinner Said:

[…]
Why should poor old “and” not get its own capital letter? It’s as good a word as any other!

For my own innocent amusement, I offer this to fuel that debate:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/491575/acronyms-and-initialisms-uppercase-lowercase-or-either

MichaelG.

[Andrew Skinner]

On Andrew Skinner Said:

With a forum post, you can just look up the meaning, not necessarily true of a printed article.

There are lots of initialisms used on here and similar places without definition:

DRO

VFD

DAMHIKT

OTOH

RTFM

Do you want me to define that last one? 😉

I did say “……….using a little used or known abbreviation ……….” from the comments here it would seem SPAG is one of those whereas we mostly all know what the others mean

[Andrew SkinnerParticipant @andrewskinner94774]

(In reply to MichaelG):

Ha! Go and argue with this lot instead…

 

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

On Andrew Skinner Said:

With a forum post, you can just look up the meaning, not necessarily true of a printed article.

There are lots of initialisms used on here and similar places without definition:

DRO

VFD

DAMHIKT

OTOH

RTFM

Do you want me to define that last one? 😉

I did say “……….using a little used or known abbreviation ……….” from the comments here it would seem SPAG is one of those whereas we mostly all know what the others mean

You did indeed. I honestly thought SPAG was a common abbreviation, certainly used when I was at school in the 90s. ‘Check your SPAG before you hand the essays in’.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

“I honestly thought SPAG was a common abbreviation, certainly used when I was at school in the 90s. ‘Check your SPAG before you hand the essays in’. ”

That’s the point. People posting on here during the daytime mostly went to school in the fifties and sixties.

[Bazyle]

On Bazyle Said:

“I honestly thought SPAG was a common abbreviation, certainly used when I was at school in the 90s. ‘Check your SPAG before you hand the essays in’. ”

That’s the point. People posting on here during the daytime mostly went to school in the fifties and sixties.

So did my teachers, who were using the term. I guess they got it from training, rather than their own school days.

[Andrew Skinner]

On Andrew Skinner Said:

You did indeed. I honestly thought SPAG was a common abbreviation…

Never heard of it before now.

Andrew

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