"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" wrote in news:XnsA0CB4A3A35EE5lloydspmindspringcom@216.168.3.70:
I work at a research lab in Cambridge, MA, right next to MIT. We have a program where grad students do their thesis work at our lab, working with a staff member, but also supervised by a professor on the MIT campus.
I've supervised four Master's theses now, and have read quite a few other recent ones. Even at a place like MIT, with a world-class reputation, the writing skills of the engineering students is pretty pathetic. In reviewing my student's theses, I spend far more time fixing spelling, grammar & poor organization than I do any real technical issues. If I'm going to sign off on it, it's going to be readable.
Some professors aren't that fussy. I recently read one that had been "supervised" by a professor I know & respect, but that was done at a different MIT affiliated lab supervised primarily by a staff member. It was so full of mistakes it was embarassing. I suspect English wasn't the student's native language, but his supervisor's either didn't read it, or were too used to bad writing to care anymore.
The worst part of it is there are so many things that sound the same (or close) or are spelled close to the same that are TOTALLY different
- and getting the wrong word into a technical spec can REALLY screw things up when the guy following the instructions knows less about the engineering than the engineer knows about the instructions he has written.
I've uses the real stuff recently. It was something insane like $20 a roll at the counter of a photographic supply place. It's like a giant version of friction tape. It doesn't become unsticky, and can mostly be removed without leaving adhesive tracks and turning into dust.
You're stretching quite far. Quite frankly the argument he is using is the sort of thing my mother would go on at length about. Doesn't matter if someone has three Nobel Prizes and wrote the Great American Novel, if she didn't like his pronunciation you'd hear about it for weeks.
I keep seeing people who know a great deal about nuclear energy criticed by people who know very little about it because the experts use a regional pronunciation for that one word.
Somebody needs to get a video camera and make the rounds of operating staff at nuclear power plants, asking each member to pronounce the word. Then do the same for PhD nuclear engineers and physicists.
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