Write It Do It B/C

[mz9712]

Are students allowed to use foreign languages as long as english letters are used? Specifically, pinyin (letter combinations that represent chinese characters). Would this be considered as "code"?

[zyzzyva980]

I believe they have to be characters that you can make with a single keystroke (+ shift) on a standard keyboard. So I'd stay way way far away from that.

EDIT: (to the post below me): Ah, right, I missed that part. Apparently I can't read. But I agree with FlavorFlav, I'd still stay far away from it.

[Flavorflav]

As the OP said, pinyin is a transliteration system using standard English letter. The problem is, the supervisor would have no idea what you were saying in Chinese and so would have no way of knowing that it wasn't a code. I think that you would almost certainly be DQed for that.

[knittingfrenzy18]

A question I sent into soinc.org but I haven't got answered yet: Is is okay to concatenate abbreviations? For example, if I define that N = north, and W = west, can I say NW and mean northwest, and still be valid?

[zyzzyva980]

I don't think there would be any problem with that. If there are, you could just add a space or an ampersand in there.

[SOnerd]

My coach wants our WIDI team to use anatomy terms (dorsal, ventral, superior, anterior) when writing.
Any thoughts on this?

[fozendog]

My coach wants our WIDI team to use anatomy terms (dorsal, ventral, superior, anterior) when writing.
Any thoughts on this?

Well if you and your partner feel comfortable using those terms and the doer can still read the instructions and build the structure accurately, then yes you should use them. If you think you can use simple terminology and do just as well, then just use the simple terminology, it's not like you get points for being fancy... XD

[hscmom]

My coach wants our WIDI team to use anatomy terms (dorsal, ventral, superior, anterior) when writing.
Any thoughts on this?

Well, the last reply was right on ("if you are comfortable") but to me these are pretty long words so you might want to abbreviate them. I can't see writing any of these terms more than a time or two in a write up.

Then again, if you are fast writer paired with a fast reader/doer, it's no big deal.

[SOnerd]

Then again, if you are fast writer paired with a fast reader/doer, it's no big deal.

I don't really see why we would want to do this instead of just writing "front" "back" "up" "down"...

[silverheart7]

Then again, if you are fast writer paired with a fast reader/doer, it's no big deal.

I don't really see why we would want to do this instead of just writing "front" "back" "up" "down"...

I don't either, but I'm not the fastest at writing. Simple terms are easier for me to keep straight, because I would be spending most of the time trying to remember what each word actually meant. During such a high stress moment too, I don't think I'd be able to. But if that's what works for you, then go for it! My partner and I used something like close/far, north/south/west/east, right/left, horizontal/vertical, and standing/flat and did well.