I am sure one could find many reasons to justify the use of English on this blag from time to time. For example, we would be able to reach a much larger audience. Which may be a goood thing. As we all remember, random people occasionally stumble across this site, and find something they like. We have for example the person who liked my post about reinforced concrete, or the people who enjoyed the insanely long posts about dead writers or some such. If these things were written in English, the number of potential readers would increase dramatically. I am not, however, thinking of those poor souls, even though they are deprived from reading my wisdom regarding reinforced concrete.

Also, if I wrote in English, it would be easier for Camillas English-speaking internet-friends, of whom I have met four, to read what I write. Which would be a good thing for them. Actually, one of them can read Norwegian, and I do not think he is a regular reader, so it might well be that they would not bother anyway. Still, it would be possible to use this as an argument to support writing in English. But I will not.

I am thinking, dear reader, only of myself. The thing is that I almost never write in English, as I discovered during my TOEFL-test last year. I read English almost every day, and I speak it occasionally, especially this last year, but apart from an email now and then, I hardly ever write in English. And since I aim to write here six times a week, I might as well post an English article from time to time, thus killing two birds with one stone.

As I mentioned, the important thing here is that i benefit from this. That means I appreciate comments about my writing, especially from any native English-speakers. And if such a thing exists, I would very much like to know the rule for when one should combine two words with a hyphen in English, which is a common problem when writing about physics. Is it for instance «high-energy limit», or «high-energy-limit»? «One-loop approximation» or «One-loop-approximation»?

In other news, I have an exam tomorrow, in applied quantum mechanics. And my university, probably in an attempt to save money, has decided to hold the exams in the available lecture theatres this year. Normally they are held in some nearby sports halls, which is far better, as you get a real desk and proper ventilation. As a result of this, my exam is in a building called «Verkstedhallen», which makes me a bit worried. I will be back with more on this tomorrow.

-Tor Nordam