Diploma thesis correction

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Hardcore

Hardcore

(Taki)
Jun 8, 2001
3,631
63
Germany
Hi everyone!

I am currently working on the thesis paper, I have to hand in (very) soon (unfortunately). Now I was wondering if any of you native english speakers ( or scandinavians :D ) would be willing to beta-read some of it?

It might even turn out to be a bit of an interesting read, because it deals with radiation sensors and computer software, etc.
Not tooooo boring, I hope.

Yeah, well. Would anyone?
Any feedback is welcome (mostly spelling- and style-wise I'd say, but of course also about the content, if you like).

But because I don't have anything to show you, yet :D and to start with a hopefully simple one:

What sounds better?
- That is what he observed having happened.
- That is what he observed to have happened.


Here is the real example I am wondering about, but I hope it is not necessary to look at it.
What is better suited for a thesis / what sounds better?
- "This assessment is performed by attempting a high-level comparison of what the DUT observed to have traversed its sensitive area to particles actually having crossed the testbeam setup."
- "This assessment is performed by attempting a high-level comparison of what the DUT observed having traversed its sensitive area to particles actually having crossed the testbeam setup."

------- Or maybe the other way around? ---------

- This assessment is performed by attempting a high-level comparison of particles actually having crossed the testbeam setup to what the DUT observed to have traversed its sensitive area.
- This assessment is performed by attempting a high-level comparison of particles actually having crossed the testbeam setup to what the DUT observed having traversed its sensitive area.

------- Or maybe the other way around? ---------

Maybe neither of those?

Thanks a lot in advance!! =)
 
Thank you! =)

Next one would be:
What about this Comma? :

Having set up a test system (see chapter \ref{...}) and having operated it long enough\footnote{...} in a testbeam (comma?) the aim is now to evaluate the DUT's quality features.
 
I think a comma would be ok there.

For the real world example I think I would go with:

"This assessment is performed by attempting a high-level comparison of what the DUT observed to have traversed its sensitive area to particles actually having crossed the testbeam setup."
But they all seem usable. The style seems ok for technical writing.
 
Well, 'saw' is the same as 'observed', and we would say "That is what he saw happening." So, change it to "That is what he observed happening."

And although it might seem odd you don't need a comma where you wanted to put one. Most people would but it's a mistake based on where people would put a pause if they were speaking it out loud in a sentence.

ie. "And although it might seem odd - pause - you don't need a comma where you wanted to put one."

That's how someone would say it out loud and yet the written version doesn't have a comma where the pause is. You'll often see commas used where they're unnecessary, just so that the person reading it to themselves will insert a pause in their own mind.
 
thank you guys!

@ Useless' "That is what he observed happening."
I had suggested "having happened" in order to emphasize a bit more, that it was a longer process, which was observed by "him".
Because I think your sentence gives the impression of "him" noticing sth. very short right when "he" started looking.
i might be wrong tho.

@ Comma:
the whole thing might be a bit more ambiguous than in German, right? -> which (in my opinion) renders longer English sentences a bit hard to read sometimes, (comma? :D) because they could use some more structuring (like in good old strict germany :D ;) ) here and there.

well, thanks a lot so far! :thumb:




lemme see, what did to those two sentences meanwhile:
at the moment I've got:

a)
"This assessment is performed by attempting a high-level comparison of radiation, which was observed by the DUT (to have traversed its sensitive area), to particles actually having crossed the testbeam setup."
Useless would make this
"This assessment is performed by attempting a high-level comparison of radiation, which was observed by the DUT (traversing its sensitive area), to particles actually having crossed the testbeam setup."

hmmmmmmm the second one doesn't sound too bad. could even leave out the brackets, eh?
(added those to give the sentence some more structure, cause it is so long which sucks but splitting it would suck as well......and... but... i mean the "to" in "compare to" must be preceded by a pause imo. otherwise one wouldn't easily get the point. and some1 reading the text for the 1st time wouldn't automagically insert a break without a comma sitting there, right? :( )
the commas around the which-relative(?) clause are alright though, I hope??
is that sentence (without the brackets even?) okay?


b)
well, the comma sentence still has one in it. i assumed there'd be one:
Having set up a test system (see chapter\ref{chap:test_system}) %TODO
and having operated it long enough\footnote{having significant statistics is important} in a testbeam (\ref{sec:test_system.final_system}), %TODO
the aim at this point is to evaluate the DUT's quality features (\ref{subsec:introduction.detector_development.evaluation_of_acquired_data}). %TODO
:D (latex ftw...)
-> Having set up a test system and having operated it long enough in a testbeam, the aim at this point is to evaluate the DUT's quality features.

Are there any rules forbidding this comma then? Or enforcing any other commas? I'd love to have it in :D
(I if go on fiddling around with that shit I am never gonna finish this... and i am very very short on time already anyway... *sigh*) :)
 
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when looking at that last post i can imagine, no1 could be arsed, right? :P

1) after all I think the commas in the sentence in a) should not be there :(
they'd be great for the structure, but... that sentence is a restrictive relative clause (it limits the word "radiation") - and thus it should not be set off by commas :(
what do you think?

2) i am talking about a pixel sensor there. would it be okay to say "that pixel's signal is very strong" even though a pixel is not a person?
 
Right, lemme take another look at them and figure out how I would construct these sentences, now that I know exactly what you want to say.

"This assessment is performed by attempting a high-level comparison of radiation, which was observed by the DUT (traversing its sensitive area), to particles actually having crossed the testbeam setup."

The commas are needless. A better way of putting this would be:

"This assessment is performed by attempting a high level comparison of radiation (which was observed by the DUT traversing its sensitive area) to particles actually having crossed the testbeam setup."

And put brackets around the entire middle section. Or you could change it to:

"This assessment is performed by attempting a high level comparison of radiation (which the DUT observed traversing its sensitive area) to particles actually having crossed the testbeam setup."

By the way, there should be no hyphen between high and level. And is testbeam a word? Shouldn't it just be test beam? And actually is pretty much a meaningless word, you might as well leave it out, it's filler.

Other than that, because I don't really understand the technical words or the context in which they're being used I can't make that sentence much better.

===

For the second one:

"Having set up a test system and having operated it long enough in a testbeam, the aim at this point is to evaluate the DUT's quality features."

I would maybe change it to:

"Having set up a test system and having operated it for a sufficient length of time in a test beam, the aim at this point is to evaluate the DUT's quality features."

The comma is correct because you've moved from one tense (past) to another (present), but I'm not sure about whether or not you could change the last bit to "the quality features of the DUT". This has much better rhythm and even some alliteration :P but does it make less sense? What is a quality feature of a DUT? Does this mean a feature of the DUT which is high quality, or a feature of the DUT which has any sort of quality? What sort of quality are you talking about? Maybe this should be changed to "evaluate the quality of the DUT's features" or just "evaluate the quality of the DUT's performance".
 
I was taught at school that sentences like "And although it might seem odd - pause - you don't need a comma where you wanted to put one." should have a comma where the pause should be. I was taught that cos the sentence is basically "You don't need a comma where you wanted to put one", then the "And although it might seem odd" is an additional extra piece of information and therefore needs the comma. But then again, I've never questioned it so I could have been taught completely wrong!
 
I think it should either be "And, although it might seem odd, you don't need a comma where you wanted to put one" or "And although it might seem odd you don't need a comma where you wanted to put one". Either two commas or none. One just doesn't make any sense to me, and since you can get away with using none why use two?
 
I wouldn't start a sentence with a conjunctive either so it would be

"It may seem odd but you don't need a comma where you wanted to put one."

Comma and semi-colon use in modern written english is more down to style than strict rules IMO. In the above sentence I would not use a comma. I would also avoid using brackets as they ruin the flow of a sentence and again are unnecessary decoration. I would probably write the other sentence as


Such an assessment is enabled by high-level comparison of the radiation detected traversing the sensitive area of the DUT with the number of particles crossing the testbeam.


1) You start the sence with "This assessment" so I guess you mentioned it in the previous sentence, in this case I prefer "Such an assessment" as a beginning although this really doesn't matter

2) By "high-level" comparison do you mean just a very accurate comparison or is that some technical term? If you just mean accurate then I would use "accurate" or "careful" instead of high-level and if it's a scientific document you need some kind of error margin.

3) If you compare something WITH something else you compare similarties AND differences. If you compare something TO something else then you compare similarities OR differences. As this seems to be a measurement then you should use "with". (Although no one except a very anal english teacher or someone who writes alot would notice)

Feel free to ignore all what I have said, rules in English are not as strict as in German.
 
It's been a long time since I did any sort of science homework, but I remember being taught about the tense depending on the section.

Introduction
Written in the tense of "I am going to do X, Y and Z". "I will do an experiment and observe the outcome". Stuff hasn't happened yet. You can't/shouldn't say what will happen - because you don't know yet - or have no proof that it will. Your prediction is based only what other people have observed before you. (Player X will beat Player Y - because he usually does - or someone said so)

Analysis/Observation/Data
"This is what I am doing, this is the data I am gathering/seeing/observing." Like speccing a UT match you're writing it as you witness the frags/explosions.

Conclusion
Past tense.. you've done all the experimentation and you've had a beer and drawn a conclusions based on your data:
"When I mixed X, Y and Z I saw A, B and C happen".
"Each time I did this I got the same results. Therefore I conclude that ...."
"Player X owned Player Y by an average of 6 points every map)


Or something like that.

If you use this style of writing for each section you should find that your words will flow much better - without trying to mix explanations, observations and conclusions together.
 
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