Dr. Kirkham of IEEE

In the United States, the most commonly used English is the version spoken by women. That is because there are more women than men – not because they talk more. The next most common is the version spoken by men. Both versions tend to be relaxed about the rules.

Fortunately, these two versions of the language are often mutually intelligible.

Lower down the list is written English, which differs considerably from the spoken sort. This presentation is about written English. Actually, it is about a subset of that sort of English: it is about the jargon-ridden and distorted sort that engineers tend to produce, the tortured sort of English that lets down its users by failing to do well the one thing it was intended for: communication. Sadly, engineer-writing is not always intelligible, even to other engineers.

You may think this is an exaggeration. It is not. There are surveys to support the case.

Most engineers have to write to earn a living. Most engineers have to communicate effectively to be seen to be good at what they do. This presentation is aimed at helping them.

The method used in the presentation is unusual: it treats the written product statistically, and it discusses tools on the computer that can be of benefit. It aims to break some bad habits.

Biography:

Harold Kirkham grew up in England. He was told that the essay he wrote there as part of his university entrance exam scored second highest in the Northern Universities Joint Matriculation Board that year. Obviously, he enjoyed English! He still does.

In university he studied electrical engineering, focusing on power and measurements. His PhD (on HVdc control) is from Drexel University.

He has worked at the Edison Electric Institute, American Electric Power, the Jet Propulsion Lab, and the Pacific Northwest National Lab. He has managed to be involved in projects from Ultra-High-Voltage transmission, distribution automation, spacecraft discharging, a tunable laser spectrometer (now on Mars), dust devils, power line noise, underwater power supply, phasor measurements, and more.

He has published about a hundred technical papers, mostly in IEEE. He has also written some magazine articles, and a book on technical graphics. And there’s one of his papers in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and one in the Journal of the International Society of Pharmacovigilance.

He is a member of IEEE Power and Energy Society, Instrumentation and Measurement Society, Oceanic Engineering Society, Communications Society, and Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society. He was chair of the PES Power System Instrumentation and Measurement Committee for several years. He is a Fellow of IEEE.