Dear Editor,
Many thanks for your article, 'Ocean currents can power the world, say
scientists' By Jasper Copping (Last Updated: 2:39PM GMT 29 Nov 2008).
I really enjoyed learning about this new concept in the extraction of
energy from the sea to provide electrical energy.
However, I did have problems reading your article at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/renewableenergy/3535012/Ocean-currents-can-power-the-world-say-scientists.html
because of your choice of words.
In your headline, 'Ocean currents can power the world, say
scientists', I had a problem with your intention, as I simply didn't
know what you meant by the word, power, in that context.
After a pause, I went on to read, 'A revolutionary device that can
harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could
provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim'.
This time your intention seemed clearer; they propose to 'harness
energy' to 'provide … power'. This time my problem was that you were
mistakenly using the word, power, when you clearly intended to refer
to energy.
Again I had to pause, but not for too long, as this is a common error
for many writers and sub-editors in many of the world's news sources.
I then reviewed your use of the word, power, on each of the 12 times
that you used it in this article (and that caused me to pause each
time while I considered what your meaning might be).
Specifically, taking the occurrences of power in your article — you
seem to mean:
1 'can power the world' — I have no idea what you mean, it could mean
'to provide all the energy needed in the world' but I couldn't know
this until I got to the next paragraph.
2 'enough power for' — 'enough energy for'.
3 'use water power' — 'use water energy'.
4 'the amount of power produced' — 'the amount of energy produced'.
5 'enough power for' — 'enough energy for'.
6 'could power an anchored ship' — 'could provide enough energy for an
anchored ship'.
7 'generating power in this way' — 'converting energy in this way'.
8 'solar power' — 'solar energy'.
9 'wave power' — 'wave energy'.
10 'Their muscle power' — 'Chemical energy from their muscles alone'.
Your score so far — 0 out of 10.
As 11 and 12 are quotes from a scientist who should know how to use
the words, energy and power, correctly, the responsibility for their
misuse cannot be laid at the door of your reporter and your sub-
editors. However, this does not make his usage correct either. It is a
sad thought but it may be that the scientist, knowing that you usually
misuse the words, energy and power, might have been dumbing down his
use of these words for your benefit.
11 'harness the powerful and destructive force' — 'harness the
destructive force'.
12 'so you produce a lot of power' — 'so you produce a lot of energy'.
I next searched for your use of the word, power, in other Telegraph
articles.
It seems to me that there are two serious defects in your use of the
word, power. Power is regularly misused, and it is also overused. Both
misuse and overuse mean that the many different meanings of power
often become hopelessly muddled.
Misuse
Misuse of the word, power, is the more serious problem as it a major
cause of confusion. You sometimes use energy when you are writing
about power but, far more often, you use power when you mean energy.
Power is so often misused from both sides of debates about global
warming, the greenhouse effect, peak energy, and peak oil, that there
is a danger of making any discussion about these important issues
almost meaningless. This paragraph uses common newspaper and internet
examples.
As Minister, he felt he had real control over power because he could
supply or deny power to the community by increasing power bills or
ordering power rationing in emergencies. He could also manage power
stations from when they start to produce power, to maintaining power
supplies during their lives of power production, until the end of
their power producing life. This applied to all forms of power such
as: chemical power, electrical power, nuclear power, solar power, and
wind power.
Here, the word, power, is used as though it is synonymous with energy.
It is not. All technical people such as engineers have known since
they were in senior high school science classes that energy (measured
in joules) is defined as the ability to do work and that that power
(measured in watts) is the rate at which you do work or use energy;
and that these are quite different concepts. Using these definitions,
the above paragraph should read:
As Minister, he felt he had real control over energy because he could
supply or deny energy to the community by increasing energy bills or
ordering energy rationing in emergencies. He could also manage energy
conversion stations from when they start to produce energy, to
maintaining energy supplies during their lives of energy production,
until the end of their energy producing life. This applied to all
forms of energy such as: chemical energy, electrical energy, nuclear
energy, solar energy, and wind energy.
Overuse
Overuse means that I have to stop each time I see the word, power,
long enough to decipher your current meaning. This is necessary
because the word, power, in addition to its scientific definition, has
about a dozen other different dictionary descriptions, all with their
associated connotations. For example, I need to pause when you use the
word, power, in the sense of (say) 'political power' that has nice
alliteration but lacks a definite meaning, or 'electrical power' that
has a quite specific scientific definition, which you might not
intend. Here is another paragraph that uses power in some of these non-
technical senses:
The Minister was a large powerful man, who exuded physical power doing
his power walk along the corridors of power. He got his power position
when his party came to power at the last election, and as the only
engineer in the party in power, the powerful leadership team appointed
him Minister.
This time, you could purge power altogether to improve readability by
writing:
The Minister was a large man, whose fitness was obvious as he
vigorously walked around Parliament House. He became Minister when,
after his party won the last election, he was appointed to his present
position by the leadership team.
On another issue, thank you for the explanation of the size of a knot
in your second paragraph. Unfortunately, the word, mile, is
meaningless to me as we, in Australia, have not used miles since the
1970s so I can have no sense of what you mean. For me to visualise a
knot it would have been better to convert knots to metres per second
as I can readily visualise water flowing past me at about half a metre
per second (as a rule of thumb, I halve knots to get metres per
second). If you chose metres per second (m/s) your sentence would then
read:
The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of
less than one knot - half a metre per second - meaning it could
operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe.
Or you could have worked directly in metres per second, and not used
the word, knot, at all.
The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of
half a metre per second meaning it could operate on most waterways and
sea beds around the globe.
Later references to knots would then become:
6 knots = 3 m/s; 3 knots = 1.5 m/s; 2 knots = 1 m/s
By the way, when you wrote 'acreage', I suppose that you meant 'area'
and you got the concept of the physical reality of area confused with
an old English, pre-metric unit for measuring land.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
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