User talk:SpareHeadOne: Difference between revisions

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Welcome!

Hello, SpareHeadOne, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Thanks for cleaning vandalism! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:00, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please, do your homework first

There are no "other types of MOS" than p-type and n-type! The names pMOS and nMOS aims at the type of transistor used (as in discrete p-channel and n-channel MOS transistors) while the C in CMOS stands for complementary (both n- and p-types on the same chip). This is on completely different levels. 83.255.42.188 (talk) 18:07, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've been a professional electronic engineer and technical author, since 1986.

I think that is enough homework. I know what these terms mean.

Sorry for my tone! I was irritated having to do "unnecessary work" again. 83.255.34.156 (talk) 09:41, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I should have said "for consistency with every other [Acronym and initialism] I've ever seen".

All capitals are used to indicate that each letter is more significant than just a letter, and that it is an acronym and not a word.

Wordprocessors incorporate this rule to ignore all-capital groups of letters as not needing to be checked against real word dictionaries.

If lower case letters get used in acronyms, then how do we rule which ones should be in which case?

Rather than complicating the situation (and spelling checker software) with yet more rules, a single all-capital rule is simplest.

There are exceptions where an acronym has become so commonly used it is an everyday word, e.g. laser.

Some publications permit named organisations like NATO and NASA to be written Nato and Nasa if they can be pronounced as a word. I guess the thinking is that the first capital is enough to indicate a name and not an object. PMOS, NMOS and CMOS would not become Pmos, Nmos and Cmos, because they are not pronounced Pumoss, Numoss or Cumoss.

The BBC remains all upper case because each letter is pronounced.

If someone can give me a convincing reason why the first letters of NMOS and PMOS should be lower case, I'd be interested in hearing it.

Easy: 1) Make it consistent with how we write p-channel, n-dopant etc. 2) Helping the uninformed reader a little, emphasizing that p and n are about basic physical polarity, while the C (complementary) or the H (High speed / High performance) in CMOS / HMOS / HCMOS (74HCxx) / CHMOS (μP) / BiCMOS are other kinds of abbreviations. 83.255.34.156 (talk) 09:41, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, if it were truly consistent, one would write p-MOS and n-MOS. in the BiCMOS example, lower case is already reserved for indicating it belongs with the previous capital letter as an abbreviation of bipolar. I've seen that used elsewhere, e.g. Mo'Fo. Pardon my language :-)

Yes, p-MOS and n-MOS would be fine with me, some authors write it that way. (I newer saw the abbrevation Mo'Fo before... ;) 83.255.38.101 (talk) 13:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't feel that one can use upper case to emphasise one thing (initial of a word) and lower case to emphasise another (basic polarity).

As you know, the nMOS and pMOS terms are indeed used, so one can, per definition. It's not really much worse than BiMOS or BiCMOS, as a sort of hybride between acronym and abbrevation. 83.255.38.101 (talk) 13:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If one goes down that path, people will end up having to devise rules about how to implement upper/lower case mixing, or be lumbered with many diverging opinions.

Yes, just like the situation regarding almost any other topic, or any other human activity for that matter ;) 83.255.38.101 (talk) 13:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Most book titles are all-upper, to avoid this problem of choice.

Yes, a quite unneeded, and old fashioned, limitation, if I may say so. 83.255.38.101 (talk) 13:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, perhaps we should just go with the most commonly used preference, by looking at a representative sample of documents.

For the consistent upper case list: - The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill - Digikey catalogue

You can also google "nMOS" / "NMOS" and count how often each version appears. From what I can see at first glance, all-upper case seems more prevalent.

Writing an encyclopedia is not ONLY a matter of statistics. It's also about deep knowledge, good taste, logical reasoning and a pedagogical choice of words, abbrevations, and language phrasing. (My own grammatical mistakes here are largely due to being born in Sweden.) Regards. 83.255.34.156 (talk) 09:41, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I never suggested it was. And I did present more than that proposition. Indeed, one cannot have facts by consensus - the Earth would still be round despite most people taking it for granted that it was flat. However, linguistic rules are set by humans and are established by consensus.

Indeed! However, the choice between nMOS, n-MOS, or NMOS is not solely a matter about linguistics or about rules. As suggested earlier, I have discovered that many people, quite erroneously, belive that either HMOS or CMOS actually represents concepts on the same level as PMOS and NMOS, simply because everything is written in the same manner. The HMOS article on WP is just one example of this (I'm HenkeB in the tiresome discussion there). I have even seen this syntactic convention used as a supporting argument when trying to impose this misconception on others... As terms like nMOS, n-MOS, nmos, etc, are indeed used in practice (although not as often as NMOS/PMOS), employing them on WP in order to suggest a difference in conceptual levels would be quite reasonable, natural, and helpful, as I see it. Of course, other common conventions should be mentioned as well, in the respective main articles. Regards 83.255.38.101 (talk) 13:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As a native English speaker, I was taught the rule that acronyms are all upper case. Letters could be omitted for less significant words like 'of', 'and' etc.

Sure, but there are exceptions to almost every rule, with various degrees of reason behind. 83.255.38.101 (talk) 13:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]