the grammar of photographic writers
I'm very bad at plurals... In my first language there is no article and nouns have no plural form. In writing patent applications, phrases such as "one or more of," "any number of," and "a plural of" are more useful because being specific without showing any detail is an important part of the game. However, the spam quoted below reminds me of unnecessary capitalization. This is actually a very common mistake among writers of photographic processes. Some people unnecessarily capitalize names of elements and compounds, e.g., Silver Nitrate and Hydroquinone (these should not be capitalized). On the other hand, some people fail to capitalize, e.g., metol, phenidone and dimezone (these should be capitalized as they are trade names). Use of italics and hyphenation adds up to the issue. In typesettnig N-methyl-p-aminophenol (Metol), N (always in capital as it referrs to the nitrogen atom in the amino group) and p should be italicized but not the rest. Unnecessary hyphenation such as N-methyl-p-amino-phenol looks funny, but things like tri-ethanol-amine look crazy, and worse unnecessary hyphens are inserted in wrong places, like benzo-tria-zole (when benzotriazole is benzo + tri + azole). Then use of inappropriate acronyms... BTA is the acronym for benzotriazole in photographic chemistry but some people (non-chemists) used BTZ. When typesetting pH, the p should be italicized in lower case and H should be always roman capital, as it referrs to hyrdogen. Same thing for pAg, pBr, etc. Then there's confusion of words and concepts... e.g., absorb v. adsorb. Then there's a long list of misnomers that should be fixed and historical artifacts that should be modernized (or modernized form should be mentioned at least). But I guess the biggest problem is high frequency of wrong statements. Many photographic pages on Wikipedia contain serious errors in addition to the above problems (and I occasionally contribute my edits only to realize someone else adds more errors). Articles/websites written by non-experts suffer from the same. And I still want to know what the "Prestigious non-accredited Universities" refer to. From: Judy Seigel <jseigel@panix.com> Subject: Re: the grammar of spam Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:36:57 -0400 (EDT) > Before I comment on Don's comment, I share some spam arrived in my inbox tonight: > > The sender was listed as "Cornell," I suppose to imply or associate with Cornell University. The message began, "Here's how much you can expect to earn in your life with the following degrees:" > > High School Diploma: $1,100,000 > Bachelor's Degree: $2,100,000 > Master's Degree: $2,500,000 > Doctorate: $4,400,000 > > You Need a Better Degree, and we can Help! > Obtain degrees from Prestigious non-accredited > Universities based on you life experience. > NO ONE is turned down. > Call Now 7 days a week.
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