User:Civil Engineer III

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Member since 27 February 2006

Userbox

This user is bold, but not reckless, in updating pages.

This user contributes using Mozilla Firefox.

This user believes that a user's edit count does not necessarily reflect on the value of their contributions to Wikipedia.

This user is a Born Again Christian

M	This user is a Wolverine fan.

man-
kind

Regarding gender, this user will use the vernacular, not what is "politically correct".

PE	This user is a licensed Professional Engineer.

This user is evil, and frequently says mwhahaha!

This user scored 529.9 on the Wikipediholic test.

I am a civil engineer with a Professional Engineer license in 10 states. I obtained my BS in Civil Engineering from Tennessee Technological University.

I am a born-again Christian, and am interested in all articles related to the Bible and Christianity, but not necessarily religious articles (yes, there's a difference). Also interests include anything to do with Michigan and curtain wall systems.

1 Barnstar
2 Philosophy
3 THINGS I HATE
- 3.1 Due to sucks
4 Important editing links
5 U.S. travels
6 Current work

[edit] Barnstar

		The Working Man's Barnstar
		For tireless copyediting. T e ke 03:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philosophy

Mostly, I am here at wikipedia because I think it is cool there is so much knowledge to be gained. I enjoy editing articles, but I don't feel that I am educated or dedicated enough to contribute a whole lot to articles. So my contribution has been in copyediting mostly. This is how I gain knowledge: I read and copyedit an article and improve wikipedia at the same time. We both win!

[edit] THINGS I HATE

Things that I can't help but change when I peruse an article:

due to
a number of...
it is important to note that... or variations thereof

Things that are bothersome, and I will change if I have the time:

Commas. If it's a compound sentence, it needs a comma after the and or but. If the phrase after the conjunction cannot be a complete sentence on its own, no comma.

[edit] Due to sucks

From [1]:

QUESTION

How do you know when to use "Due to" as opposed to "Because of"?

RESPONSE

Some grammarians would prefer that we never use "due to" at all, but the phrase has some useful and acceptable applications, as Burchfield points out:

   * (payable to) "Pay Caesar what is due to Caesar."
   * (likely to) "It's due to rain this afternoon."
   * (properly owed to) "Much of what we own is due to my wife's investment decisions."
   * (following "to be") "His obesity is due to his daily diet of butterscotch sundaes."

Burchfield then points out that when "due to" is used to create a prepositional phrase in a verbless clause, many grammarians will object.

   * "Due mainly to the engineers' incompetence, the roof began to sag dangerously."
   * "Due to the efforts of the English faculty, students' scores writing have begun to rise."

Burchfield concludes that this use of due to seems to be forming "part of the natural language of the twenty-first century."

The phrase "due to the fact that" can often be replaced, to good effect, with "because."

Authority: The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England. 1996.

[edit] Important editing links

Could we but get a good regular army we should soon clear the continent of these damned invaders.
—Thomas Nelson to Thomas Jefferson, 2 January 1777

From Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers):

Serena Williams (born September 26, 1981)
- For a person still living at the time the article was written.
- Notice that the form is NOT "(September 26, 1981–)"

Edit count tool

[edit] U.S. travels

Spent years:

Days to Months:

Hours:
	Idea and layout taken from User:jpgordon, who borrowed it from User:Calton, who appropriated it from User:Salsb, who stole it from User:Guettarda who borrowed it from User:Coolcat