Dear Editor,
I am glad you are advertising for a proofreader. In the recent past I have been too frequently annoyed by indecipherables. I can’t remember finding any in the editorials I read, but the sports pages had too many for a daily like the Stabroek News.
My particular concern is in the reporting of technical matters. I will illustrate with the page 17 article on the new Port Kaituma generator (above your proofreader ad) in the SN of June 9.
“… a 625KVA with an output capacity of 500 kilowatt hour (Kwh) and a 438KVA with and an output of 354 Kwh” should have read ‘a 625 kVA with an output capacity of 500 kilowatt (kW) and a 438 kVA with and an output of 354 kW.’
All ‘K’s in the units should have been written in the lower case according to the metric SI units we are supposed to use. Worse, the output capacities in kilowatt hours are nonsensical, because the kilowatt hour (properly written as kWh) is a unit of energy and cannot be compared with the apparent power in kVA. A 625 kVA generator (costing in the hundreds of thousands of US$) that can only produce 500 units of electricity (less than $27,000 at the current GPL household tariff) would be a sorry load of junk! It will be obvious to an electrical engineer that 500 is 80% of 625 and that 80% is the kW:kVA power factor.
The other ratios, 354:438 and 350:437 are similar.
I do not think I am being pedantic. Such literature must be truthful. Inaccuracies and inconsistencies are to be expunged as far as possible for a culture of exactitude to prevail, behind which no unaccountable skulduggery may be concealed.
Yours faithfully,
Alfred Bhulai
