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Interesting Items...

Part of the brexit deal.Or was it cut and paste in No 10?

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I reckon it was written by somebody with an adequate technical understanding and who knows what COTS means, but not what it stands for. When I was authoring technical documents to MoD requirements the first use of an abbreviation had to be put in full, with its abbreviation following in brackets, and then it was OK to use the abbreviation thereafter (personally I prefer to use the abbreviation from the start and spell it out first time in brackets). So somebody has written COTS and then had to put in what they guessed it stands for.
 
Black Hole said:
When I was authoring technical documents to MoD requirements the first use of an abbreviation had to be put in full, with its abbreviation following in brackets, and then it was OK to use the abbreviation thereafter (personally I prefer to use the abbreviation from the start and spell it out first time in brackets).
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I too used abbreviation with full name in brackets on first use when I was writing installation instructions and the like many years ago.
 
Black Hole said:
personally I prefer to use the abbreviation from the start and spell it out first time in brackets
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I couldn't remember what I used to do, so I looked up some old journal papers that I was a co-author on. Probably I followed the house style as we seemed to write things out in full with the abbreviation following. Example from 1989: "...problems of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) ... nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NEMP) and lightning (LEMP) events."
I'm not sure whether I'd follow the same style now.
 
EEPhil said:
I couldn't remember what I used to do, so I looked up some old journal papers that I was a co-author on. Probably I followed the house style as we seemed to write things out in full with the abbreviation following. Example from 1989: "...problems of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) ... nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NEMP) and lightning (LEMP) events."
I'm not sure whether I'd follow the same style now.
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Reading that I think that the 'other' way is clearer. For "...problems of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) ..." the reader has to go back and work out where the acronym begins - fairly obvious here but there will be edge cases. If you write "...problems of EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) ..." it's much more obvious what the acronym is for.
I tend to use the latter but also capitalise the in-full part to correspond with the acronym. Thus "...problems of EMC (ElectroMagnetic Compatibility) ...".
 
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Black Hole said:
I'm pretty sure this came up in an argument a long time ago - but without the explanatory article. Thanks.
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Yes, it makes a whole lot more sense to me now, thanks to that link from a friend in Oxford. (discussion, not argument!)

So, the contracted rod is just the lower edge of the cube, and its actual contraction exactly coincides with the observed rotation.

What I am not sure of is, remember those general relativistic images of sitting at the centre of a large rotating spoked wheel? The problem was, the circumference would contract, so what would you actually see? The old argument was, 2 pi r was invalidated. But, maybe you do see a large rotating spoked wheel?
 
Black Hole said:
Nonetheless, the opposite is required style for defence documentation.
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Problem with doing it "Light Emitting Diode (LED)" is that it breaks the rule about referring to something the same way throughout the document if you then use LED. And on the subject of consistency I've seen documents that can't make up their mind to e.g. refer to it as an LED, an indicator or a light, and then does it come on, illuminate or light.
 
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:confused:

everthewatcher said:
Problem with doing it "Light Emitting Diode (LED)" is that it breaks the rule about referring to something the same way throughout the document if you then use LED.
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Problem or not, that's what they do. If you're going to be consistent and use "Light Emitting Diode" throughout, there's no need to introduce the abbreviation at all.

I know I said I would rather use "LED (Light Emitting Diode)", but actually I would prefer to go straight in with "LED" and push explanations into the glossary (there has to be a glossary).
 
Black Hole said:
I know I said I would rather use "LED (Light Emitting Diode)", but actually I would prefer to go straight in with "LED" and push explanations into the glossary (there has to be a glossary).
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Still not sure which way round I'd do this now. As the junior co-author on papers I followed what the lead author did. When I was lead author I followed the same style.
I think I'd prefer to have a belt-and-braces approach with abbreviations or acronyms. Whichever way (acronym first or explanation first), always include the explanation on first use and in the glossary (if there is one). Never repeat the explanation after first use.
 
EEPhil said:
I think I'd prefer to have a belt-and-braces approach with abbreviations or acronyms. Whichever way (acronym first or explanation first), always include the explanation on first use and in the glossary (if there is one). Never repeat the explanation after first use.
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Sometimes it's worth putting any new or uncommon abbreviations in an introduction, and a glossary is definitely a must in documents that may not be read linearly.
 
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