Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Foreign Words
If you use a foreign word that you feel needs to go in italics, consider instead using an
English equivalent. Some writers feel that use of foreign words is
de rigueur
because
it lends the work a certain
je ne sais quoi
and shows
savoir-vivre
, but such writing is
hard to understand.
Latin expressions are occasionally used—but more often misused—in technical
writing. Examples include
mutatis mutandis
,
prima facie
,
circa
,
mea culpa
, and
vice
versa
. Such phrases are not universally understood, and should only be used if you
are confident of the meaning.
It is polite to use appropriate characters for foreign names, if they are natively
written in a Latin character set. Don't write “Børstëdt” as “Borstedt”, for example.
But “
” may have to be written as “Zhang”.
Overuse of Words
Repetition of a word is annoying when it makes the reader feel they have read the
same phrase twice, or have read a phrase and an inversion of it.
Ada was used for this project because the underlying operating system
is implemented in Ada.
Ada was used for this project because it is the language used for imple-
mentation of the underlying operating system.
Repetition should be eliminated when the same word is used in different senses, or
when a word and a synonym of it are used together.
Values are stored in a set of accumulators, each initially set to zero.
Values are stored in a set of accumulators, each initialized to zero.
Some words grate when they are used too frequently. Common offenders include
“this”, “very”, and “case”. Other words are even more memorable—unusual words,
other than technical terms, should only be used once or twice in a paper. Watch out
for tics: excessive use of some stock word or phrase. Typical tics include “so”, “also”,
“hence”, “note that”, and “thus”.
There are cases in which repetition is useful. In the phrase “discrete quantities and
continuous quantities”, the first “quantities” can be omitted, but such omissions are
often ambiguous and can result in text that is difficult to parse. What, for example,
is intended by “from two to four hundred”? A common error relating to this form of
