Be Square, But Don’t be a Square
Meter is a unit of linear measure. If you want to use meter for area, you have to say “square meters” (or meter2 or m2). I tend to presume that scientific types know this. Now look at this sentence:
With a total collection area of 73,000 square meters (roughly 20 square acres), the NAIC stood as the largest single-aperture telescope on the planet from the date of its completion in 1963 to 2016 when China completed its FAST telescope.
https://www.engadget.com/what-were-losing-with-the-destruction-of-the-arecibo-telescope-173040347.html
Apparently the writer doesn’t know English units! Acre is already a unit of area; you wouldn’t say “square square meters,” would you?
PS—I put the hyphen in “single-aperture” because it’s a compound adjective; a topic for another post.
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Fix This Sentence!
It’s ambiguous.
When the Murrays bought out the Seversons’ interest in the land in 2005, the Severson brothers retained two thirds of the land’s underlying mineral rights.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/11/dueling-dinosaurs-fossil-finally-set-to-reveal-secrets/
- Two thirds of the mineral rights under all the land?
- All the mineral rights under two thirds of the land?
I confess I don’t know how they do these things; the sentence could go either way as far as the sentence structure goes.
What do you think?
Here’s a picture of the fossil that the article is about:
They mentioned that the photo is copyrighted, so I included the link again.
A Somewhat Bogus Rule
The problem with the rule is that nouns can so often be turned into verbs…
…so when you’re a verb, this is okay. But you know that, right?
Commas and Conjunctions
When you have a compound sentence, put the comma before the conjunction. Applies to semicolons, too. I think the big guy looks angry because the little guy has it wrong. Right???
More Bad Writing
Definitely not clear! Misleading, even! After several headlines saying essentially the same thing, here’s a quote from the main article:
A team of researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has discovered a new method that makes it possible to transform electricity into hydrogen or chemical products by solely using microwaves – without cables and without any type of contact with electrodes.
http://www.upv.es/noticias-upv/noticia-12415-una-revolucion-en.html
Really? Use microwaves to create hydrogen atoms out of electricity without using anything but the microwaves? Farther into the article, we figure out that the microwaves are beamed at something; microwaves are the only tool used to changed the material. I think:
The technology developed and patented by the UPV and CSIC is based on the phenomenon of the microwave reduction of solid materials, in this study exemplified by the reduction of Cerium oxide.
Okay, class, re-write that sentence so it’s clearer. Here’s a picture of the scientists; apparently not the writer.
