Tue 13 May 2008
It is well known that written composition is not one of the strong points of most engineering-oriented curricula. The joke around my undergraduate university (George Mason University) was that Computer Engineering majors, such as myself, were totally illiterate as they were only subjected to two English courses in order to maximally combine the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering programs. Most of the other engineering programs had three courses, so although they could read and write, we made their computers operate.
I have been trying to fill the hole left by the one missing English course and to be more coherent in written and verbal conversations, so I have spent a little bit of time looking to avoid common pitfalls in the English language. To my surprise, there is a fairly good list of commonly misused Physics terms as maintained by Donald Simanek. There is some humorous intention, however, it is a good starting point. There is also the list of commonly misused English phrases, as well as a list of English words with disputed usage. I am sure that undergraduate engineering students will continue to loathe their English courses (as I did), however, the bright pupils may use proper grammar and composition as a tool to separate themselves from the rest.
( Photo is from surrealmuse. )
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