Internet commentary

Internet commentary

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put [1]

Keywords: Internet, Language

Many Web sites lose their impact by being written in bad English. Of course, if you are addressing a market which uses French or Chinese, you will not use English at all. For the sake of this article, I assume you are addressing an English-speaking audience. A technical Web site must be written in what is called Standard Written English. Unfortunately, there is not just one form of such English; the major ones are UK English and American English. In addition, there are some minor ones which, for the sake of this article, may be ignored. So, which form should you use? If your readers are predominantly British or American, then the answer is obvious. If they may be anywhere in the world, then the choice is yours but I suggest that UK English is more universally understood, despite the efforts of Hollywood. This is partially because of the residue of the British Empire but also because of the efforts of the British Council which promotes English in over 100 foreign countries.

The obvious difference between UK and American English is in the spelling of many words, such as colour/color. There are also differences in the meaning of many words; if you walk on the pavement in the USA, you are likely to be splattered by a car; this is much more unlikely in Britain (pavement in the US is what the Brits would call a roadway, whereas in the UK it is what the Americans would call a sidewalk). In addition, but less important, there are some grammatical differences in the two dialects. Thanks to the impact of international communications, some of these differences are slowly disappearing. For example, correct UK English usage would write, “I shall go to town tomorrow” whereas our American friends would write, “I will go to town tomorrow”. Today, many Brits would use the latter phraseology, but most inhabitants of both sides of the Atlantic would understand both sentences. For formal Web sites, never use spoken contractions, such as, “I’ll go to town tomorrow”.

The difference, however, does not stop there. Technical jargon may be very different on both sides of the Atlantic. For some unknown reason, the term, “printed circuit board” has slowly evolved into, “printed wiring board” in the USA. This latter term has not always been used, as can be seen in the initials IPC, which originally stood for the Institute of Printed Circuits. For some years, the IPC has gone through a number of name changes while retaining the initials. The equivalent organisation on the Eastern side of the Atlantic has not had this problem, because the EIPC is still the European Institute of Printed Circuits! It is therefore very important that you use technical terminology that is understandable in the market that you are addressing. Again, the dilemma that authors face when writing the text for Web pages that will be read the world over is which terminology to use – and this can vary even from country to country or even regionally within a country. In my opinion, UK terminology is probably the most widely understood and most universally acceptable. The reason for this is that there is a small core of diehard English speakers who revolt at what they consider “Americanisms”. I believe that there is less resistance by Americans to what they call the “Queen’s English”. The important point is that, once you have chosen to write in one dialect, do not mix them. If you do, you are sure to offend somebody!

Many people think that they can write perfect English, when they cannot. This does not apply uniquely to those of a foreign mother tongue. The written English of many Britons, Americans and inhabitants of other countries with English mother tongue is frequently atrocious. Equally so, or even worse, is the written English of some of those whose mother tongue is not English but may have a good knowledge of the language. There are many Web sites on the Internet that are devoted to quoting laughable examples of the misuse of English. We have probably all seen instruction leaflets which are all but incomprehensible, especially from the Far East (to avoid accusations of racism, the language used by many companies from that region is very good). There is a cure available for those whose English is not fully up to scratch and who wish to have a Web site which is well written. That is to use a professional editor. If the original draft is just about comprehensible, this is not an expensive proposition.

The publishers of this journal have an offshoot, called the Literati Club, which is aimed at helping prospective authors to write acceptable articles and technical papers. Recognising that authors are not all of English mother tongue, this club has compiled a list of qualified technical editors who can “translate” poor English into Standard Written English at a reasonable cost. This list is on the Internet and can be found at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/literaticlub/editingservice.htm

Although most of this journal is written in Standard Written English, I should mention that the Internet Commentaries, which I write, are somewhat more informal with a style which would not be acceptable for serious Web sites. I like to add a touch of humour or a colloquialism, here and there, to make it more readable.

There is another aspect of the use of English on the Internet and that is the composition of E-mails. Generally speaking, the language used is frequently less formal. The better you know your correspondent, the better you can judge how informal you may make your messages. If you are writing to a total stranger about a technical or business matter, it is better not to be too informal, at least to start with. For the first message, if you know his or her name, use a formal title, such as Mr Smith or Mrs Jones. Most often, by the second message, you will be down to first-name terms. This is acceptable “E-mail-speak”. There are many abbreviations which have become fairly standard for E-mailing, such as in my humble opinion (IMHO) or thanks in advance (TIA), as well as many others. Correctly used, these abbreviations are perfectly acceptable in any E-mail message.

A word of warning may be in order here. Because E-mail messages are often very terse, they can sometimes give offence where none is intended. Before pressing the “Send” button, it is wise to read your message impartially to check that it cannot be misinterpreted. If in doubt, it would be safer to reword the message into a longer form (especially if your correspondent is someone who is likely to give you an order for a million!). This problem is exacerbated when the sender and receiver of the message belong to different ethnic groups, and neither are of English mother tongue. This multiplies the chances of misinterpretation and the safest course would be to use Standard Written English.

To conclude this prologue, I would like to recommend a book that may help you to understand what makes good Standard Written English in either the UK or American dialects. Appropriately, it is written by an American and published by the British Penguin Books Limited, under the title Mind the Gaffe by R.L. Trask, ISBN 0-14-051476-7 (Plate 1). It is a clearly written guide to what or what not to write in both UK and American English. Although a reference book, it does make good reading in its own right (or should that be write?), with touches of humour here and there. As an example, please allow me to quote what Trask says about the word “ilk”:

Plate 1 The front cover of Mind the Gaffe

A small word that arouses passions out of all proportion to its size or importance. As any reference book will tell you, the traditional Scottish use is illustrated by McTavish of that ilk, which means either “McTavish of (the family) McTavish” or “McTavish of (the place) McTavish”. No one will object to this if you ever have occasion to use it.

The problems arise because ilk has passed into vernacular English as a synonym for “kind”, “sort”, though often with a somewhat dismissive air about it, as in politicians and others of that ilk or mass murderers of Saddam Hussein’s ilk. Some people find this normal and unremarkable. Other people hate it. Some authorities say it is OK. Other authorities warn us against it. That is enough for me: do not use the word this way unless you enjoy annoying your readers. You can always find another phrase, such as of that stripe, to serve your purpose, and many of your readers will remember that skunks have stripes.

For the review section of this article, I am using temporary solder mask as my keywords. This has produced about 1,900 responses in Google and here are some of them.

http://www.alliedelec.com/catalog/catalogpages/2002/196.pdf

This link has produced a single page with various products. There are four temporary solder masks offered in small squeeze bottles. These are of various types, suitable for any purpose. It is fairly clear that this Web site is that of a reseller, in this case offering a product under the trade name Wondermask. The page itself took me over 5 min to download, as it is 750 kb long with a poor server connection, and I had to zoom Acrobat to 200 percent in order to be able to read the small type on a cluttered PDF page. Only the salient points of each product are mentioned and the page does not contain the name and address of the company, although there is a telephone number.

http://www.qualitek.com/products/techdata/chemical/supermask1.PDF

This PDF file is much better than the previous one in that it was rapid to download, being only 18 kb. It gives the technical data on a single water-soluble temporary mask and it is very satisfactory. In addition, it is easy to read and a full name and address of the manufacturer are on the same page, an example of a good data sheet.

http://www.action-electronics.com/ctlube.htm

This URL leads to an ordinary Web page of another reseller. In this case, he is offering one single peelable mask. The page is reasonably fast to download and contains all the necessary data for ordering, although with a slight paucity of technical data. I was pleased to note that it was possible to link to the manufacturer’s Web site to obtain a PDF material safety data sheet.

http://www.residues.com/pdf/CaseS12.PDF

This is an interesting PDF file, only a few kilobytes long. It describes a case study of contamination due to the use of a peelable mask. This demonstrates the presence of undue anions where the mask had been applied and removed. This can, of course, reduce the reliability of any assembly using that type of mask. In a way, it is a pity that no measure was made of the cations, which I would suspect to be largely ammoniacal and equally dangerous.

http://www.peters.de/lp_infos/lp_i_32/e_21/experien.htm

This page is a technical article on the screen printing of peelable solder masks. By using a special type of stencil, the advantages of both stencils and woven screens are combined with sufficient material laid down to ensure that there is no breakdown during the soldering operation. I find this page academically interesting but I suspect that the method shown would be too expensive for anything but the larger runs.

http://www.qcminds.com/cer-110h.htm

This is a data sheet, fast to download, for a water-soluble mask. It goes into great detail on how to apply the solder mask, but it says nothing about how to remove it, other than to tell you that it can be quickly removed in batch or conveyorised equipment! It suggests that the wash water should conform to federal and state regulations, but there is no information as to what it would be likely to contain in the way of pollutants. This left me a little hungry for more information.

http://www.concoat.co.uk/temporary_mask.htm

Unfortunately, this Web page leaves one really very hungry – in fact, starving! It barely mentions a peelable and a water-soluble type with no details and, apparently, no link to where one can find more details. This is all the more strange when one considers that Concoat are deep into related fields.

http://www.advancedpcb.com/soldmask.htm

Unfortunately, this is another site which lacks sufficient information to enable a choice to be made. It tells us that their product is peelable and vinyl based and is screen printable. Beyond that, there is little to be said. When will manufacturers learn that Web sites should help them sell a product and not turn away prospective clients?

http://www.kester.com/PDF%20FILES/PDF%20Data%20Sheets/ K%20Techform/TC560%20(30Jun95)logo.pdf

Although this PDF file is over 100 kb long, it downloaded reasonably rapidly because of a good connection to the Kester server. It describes a water-soluble temporary solder mask but a peculiar thing is that it is not compatible with inorganic water-soluble fluxes. However, this is not a restriction, because the fluxes we use in the electronics industry are generally organic. It is useful to note that this page contains a warning about using the product in closed loop systems, because of the clogging that it may cause. The same applies to nearly every type of water-soluble mask but most manufacturers “forget” to mention it in their data sheets. Kester are to be congratulated on their honesty.

http://www.rampinc.com/product1.htm

This company provides a water-soluble temporary masking tape. The page in question extols the virtues of this technology, while giving little real information. My personal experience of one such product is somewhat mitigated, partly because of the difficulty of dissolving the residues and partly because the volume of matter in the wash water becomes rather important. It is to be hoped that these disadvantages do not appear with this particular manufacturer’s product. There is little technical information to guide the reader.

http://www.masktek.com/cbs.htm

This enterprise provides a custom service, applying solder masks of all types to printed circuit boards. It includes the application of peelable and water-soluble temporary masks, as well as permanent ones. Judging from the description, it would appear to be a very serious undertaking and could be quite useful for customers within a reasonable geographical radius. They are located in California.

http://www.humiseal.com/protect/PDF/guide.pdf

Humiseal is a company that is very well known for its conformal coating products. Among these, there is a peelable mask, essentially for protecting parts of the circuit from conformal coating. The manufacturer claims that it is also usable as a peelable solder mask, without going into technical details. This PDF file is enormous, nearly one-and-a-half megabytes long. Despite that, I found it downloaded reasonably speedily with a good server connection.

http://www.ateksystems.com/gpd_dispense.html

Of course, dispensing is a common method of applying temporary solder masks. Another use for this process is applying adhesive dots. This page offers a machine which will do both at the same time. There are not enough details to learn how conflicts are avoided, but it is obvious that two heads are involved. This is quite an ingenious system, assuming that it works correctly and that it is relevant to the production methods in use.

http://www.loctite.com/pdf/soldering.pdf

This is a 350 kb PDF file, from Loctite’s fast server, describing the range of Multicore products which are being offered by the parent company. Unfortunately, the temporary solder mask is barely mentioned as a peelable type, with no details.

http://www.smt.uk.com/pages/surclean/06.html

This is a data sheet on a peelable mask, apparently produced by a UK company. There is probably as much data as one could expect, including a link to a material safety data sheet. However, I would like to use this example to emphasise the contents of my prologue above. The quality of the English certainly leaves to be desired, with the use of meaningless gobbledegook, irrelevant qualifications (a saponifier is called a flux!) and bad grammar. Especially from an English company, this reduces its credibility, no matter how good the product may be. Oh! in addition, there are no company co-ordinates on the data sheet, nor is there a link to find them elsewhere on the Web site, so that, even if you are persuaded to try the product, you would have to hunt hard to find out how to obtain a sample!

http://www.interfluxusa.com/Datasheets/Acrypeel2000.htm

This is yet another peelable solder mask. Essential data is given on this page, with nothing superfluous. An apparent link to a material safety data sheet unfortunately leads only to a form allowing one to request it. I do not consider this adequate because it may be required urgently, if such a form was not previously supplied or had become mislaid.

It would therefore seem that there is no shortage of suppliers of temporary solder masks. Especially with the peelable types, one wonders exactly how many that may be. I strongly suspect that some of the smaller makers simply repackage the same products under their own labels.

There is one point which I wish to emphasise. Relatively few of the sites that I have reviewed link directly to a material safety data sheet. In this day and age, this is unsatisfactory and I implore manufacturers of chemicals for our industry to have these published directly on their Web sites, clearly linked from the data sheets. To fail to do so gives the impression that the manufacturer has something to hide and, this being the case, there is a risk that prospective customers will go elsewhere. This is particularly important with a product which is often applied by hand and may contain toxic components, such as ammonia.

A few Web sites have claimed that their temporary solder mask is “easy to remove and leaves no residues” or words to that effect. This is rarely true, as is shown by the case study which I have reviewed. In many cases, temporary solder masks may become partially permanent and leave dangerous residues, although they may be invisible. A little more truth in advertising would be served by, for example, putting on the data sheet a typical analysis obtained under practical conditions, so that prospective users can judge whether the product is unlikely to affect the reliability of the assembly. In particular, water-soluble masks are often quite difficult to dissolve and it would be helpful if time, temperature and energy conditions were cited to obtain a given result.

Brian EllisCyprusb_ellis@protonique.com

Note1   Sir Winston Churchill, in Ernest Gower’s Plain Words (1948) Troubles with Prepositions.