Prologue
I’m going to proofread the standard ASTM D3612-02 – Standard Test Method for Analysis of Gases Dissolved in Electrical Insulating Oil by Gas Chromatography, and if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
(If anyone from ASTM is reading this, email me :] )
Table of Contents
(and by contents, I mean errors)
| Page | Section | Error | Correction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3.1.1 | “…by volume – in Method A, the…” | “…by volume – in Method A, the…" OR ”…by volume – in Method A…" The second choice would fit the formatting of not italicizing “Method X” outside of section titles. |
| 2 | 7.1 | “…syringetpye devices…” | “…syringe-type devices…” |
| 4 | 7.2.1 | “Samples have been stored in syringes and metal cylinders for four weeks with no appreciable change in gas content.” | What, no reference to back this up? |
| 4 | 9.2 | “where V_o = the volume…” | “where V_o is the volume…" Really shouldn’t use “=” in text, even if it follows a math equation as it does here. |
| 4 | 9.3 | All of the math definitions after “where:” that use “=” | Replace “=” with “is” |
| 4 | 9.5 | “(Note 5)” | No other notes so far got their own hyperlink, why is this one special? |
| 4 | 9.5 | “where, density = density of the oil of interest…” | “where density is the density of the oil of interest…" This is the one that spurred me to do this, lol. |
| 4 | 10.6 | “This is the volume, V_o used in the calculation…” | “This is the volume V_o used in the calculation…” |
| 5 | 10.6.1 | “…syringe including the bubble; or, if…” | C’mon, just use a period or a comma, nobody likes semicolons. |
| 5 | 11.3, 11.4 | “The apparatus shall…” | Nothing really wrong, but I found the sudden change in language from “technical manual” to “legal standard” with the use of “shall” to be quite jarring. I suspect 11.3 and 11.4 were written by someone else other than the author of the rest of the document. |
| 5 | 11.5 | “…a separate GC or other device…” | Had to figure out what “GC” meant. It’s Gas Chromatograph, but “Gas Chromatograph” in 11.1 should probably include an acronym identifier next to it (i.e. “Gas Chromatograph (GC)) |
| 5 | 11.6 | “Fixed Needle Gas-Tight Syringes, of suitable…” | “Fixed-Needle Gas-Tight Syringes of suitable…” |
| 7 | 15.4 | More “=” | Less “=”, more “is” |
| 7 | 16.1 | “Report the following information:” | After that, it goes to 16.1.1, 16.1.2, 16.1.3, etc. It feels odd – shouldn’t this be a series of bullet points instead of sub-headers? |
| 7 | 17.1 | “The precision, bias and lower limit…” | “The precision, bias, and lower limit…" Technical papers should utilize the oxford comma IMO. |
| 7 | 17.2 | “Precision – Repeatability” | It’s a definition, it should have gone in the “Terminology” section at the start of the standard. |
| 7 | 17.3 | “Precision – Reproducibility” | Same as above. |
| 8 | 17.3.1 | “C_n is the concentration…” | They didn’t use “=” here, but that just points out the lack of congruent formatting throughout the standard. Also, the definitions of the variables in the equation should probably still be in list form instead of just in-line text. (This happens again in 17.4.1) |
| 8 | 17.4 | “Bias –” | Again, put this in the “Terminology” section. |
| 8 | 17.4.2 | “No analytical transformation adequately fits the results; these results are shown graphically…” |
Not incorrect – I wanted to point out the correct usage of a semicolon, which is very rare. Bravo! |
| 8 | 20.1 | Space after em dash | Remove space |
| 10 | 22.1 | “=” everywhere | “=” = is |
| 10 | 24.4 | “=” | “is” |
| 10 | 25.1 | “Report the following information:” | Same as above, use bullet points. |
For some reason, my version of the standard ends here. For that reason, so does my proofreading. Oh well, sad day.
Surprisingly, with all of these minor errors, they actually correctly used the em dash for their sentence breaks as opposed to the en dash, as I’d expect from a standard written in US English. Bravo.