Re: EE terms

[Joel <eleysium -at- gmail -dot- com>]

The IEEE has style standards that you might find helpful.

Joel

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Nancy Allison <maker -at- verizon -dot- net> wrote:

>
> Hi, everyone. Is anyone else here laboring in the vineyards of
> electrical engineering?
>
> I'm working on a manual about circuit breakers, and various stylistic
> problems keep coming up. My question to fellow EE writers is, do you
> have a style guide or other resource that you draw on to help sort out
> problems like the ones I am about to list?
>
> I've looked at IEEE publications, and there are many, but I haven't been
> able to identify or get my hands on the one that might contain the
> standards I need.
>
> OK, here's what I'm mostly dealing with:
>
> 1. Noun clusters. I'm trying to walk the fine line between overly
> simplifying things (because of my own ignorance) and leaving unnecessary
> noun clusters in place.
>
> Example: Contact open – travel OCB/overall test/one break per phase
> breaker
>
> This is the proposed caption of a figure provided by an engineer. This
> engineer sees no problem with this wording, but even though I am not an
> electrical engineer, I do. My only hope is to ask the product manager,
> who is my boss, to review these with me one by one and either approve
> them or suggest revisions.
>
> 2. Inconsistent capitalizations. All of the illustrations show wave
> forms that reflect the opening and closing of breakers. There are a
> zillion possible combinations, because breakers have different numbers
> of contacts and they open and close in synchronized ways. One figure
> caption is this: Reclose Open-Close Time.
>
> I'm willing to believe that it is meaningful . . . but I have trouble
> with a related sentence that says "The Reclose Open-Close Time, as shown
> in Fig XX, is . . . ."  Opening and closing is what circuit breakers do,
> and it's what a 400-page manual is all about.  Are these terms therefore
> capitalized? In some contexts, but not others? As in "The circuit
> breaker opened," but "The circuit breaker Open rate is 8.3 ms"?
>
> 3. Inconsistent terms. "Close time" or "Closing time" -- these terms
> occur interchangeably in the document, and there are plenty of other
> inconsistencies.
>
> EE writers -- how do you handle this stuff?
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ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing 
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor,  Microsoft Word or 
HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. 
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authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
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