A rant on business communications...
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My favorite ad: "Learn English"
* Noel -
AAAAAgreed! I cannot believe that people in positions of authority often write so poorly! Obviously, they are not checking their own work, yet they will most assuredly, (I checked this spelling in Word before typing it) others work!
The commercials. I beleive that is simply a sign of the laziness of America. We used to sign our own work and people had a work ethic to aspire to excellence! Now, it is just get it out the door and make the buck! Our education system is abysmal - not just poor teachers, (yes, they exists all over the place), but the bureaucratic system of determining what is taught...
I am as guilty of this as the next joker - but I do try and double check...
I wasn't born stupid - I had to study.
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Sushila,
Look at it this way: sometimes creative people care only about the content, not paying attention to the form. I know it well. I had very good grades in language at school (it was Russian) . But when I had to write an essay I was paying attention (completely preoccupied) to only what I was writing not to the grammer and spelling. And well, had As for content and Cs for spelling! So when I had my entrance exams to Moscow University my mom told me to write short staright sentences with easy words. Boring, but sure thing! I use this tactic in my business emails here too. Word Spellchecker does not help, like in cases Then and Than, both will be correct.
And yes, you are right: these things don't bother me because they are in English. I did notice them when reading in Russian: "old school"
Regards,Yelena Varsha
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Disambiguate - what a mouthful! Since it's almost the end of the day for me - I shall just go forth and cogitate (or maybe I mean ruminate) on this -
I do have a response but 'fraid cannot be made now - TG tomorrow IF..
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
Scott,
Disambiguate!
The perfect example was in Scientific American magazin about 20 years ago. The article talked about artificial intelegence. How the computer can interpret "The chickens are ready for dinner" Are the chicken going to be fed? Or they are cooked as food?
Sushila,
Try to get "The Complaint Book" by Anton Chekhov. At least you will have something to quote. This is one of the most famous Russian quotations when someone does not express himself correctly using bad grammer or spelling: (translated by me) " Coming to the station and looking outside through the window my hat flew away" The story is just sort of a listing from a station's Complaint Book with funny entries in less then perfect language left by the passengers. So when my mom saw the writings as discussed in this topic she would say: " Coming to the station..." again! Does not he / she have a secreatry to read it before publishing..."
Regards,Yelena Varsha
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Yes, one of my favorites, but you have to understand, I work for an insurance company. you should read some of our claims...
Scott
Fruit flies like a banana, time flies like the wind...
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"Yes, one of my favorites, but you have to understand, I work for an insurance company"
Considering the large number of idiots you insure to drive cars - why do you expect them to be able to spell ??????????????
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Funny you should say that timfle - the last insurance company I bought my insurance from actually asked me about my educational qualifications - when I asked why it mattered, he said that the more educated you are the less likely you are to drive like a teen showing off on his first date - they gave me excellent rates and I'm still with them...
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
My colleague's insurance company increased his rate because he had had an accident in the previous year. The fact that the accident was not his fault (another car ran into him) did not matter. He was deemed to be the sort of person that "is more likely than others" to attract accidents. Before that, he had a ten-year claim-free history. Incredible.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
- Martin Rees
The absence of consumable DDL, sample data and desired results is, however, evidence of the absence of my response
- Phil Parkin -
Give a dog a bad name and hang him!
way of the insurance world unfortunately!
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
scary when a market can punch a consumer in the mouth... because they used the service the company offered... if they do not like covering accidents stop offering the service...
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Scott,
you say "you should read some of our claims". Do you think that some people would use ambiguous expressions on purpose in hope that an insurance employee would interpret it to their benefit while a correct interpretation is possible too so they would not be accused of fraud?
Maybe I just let my imagination to go wild and they all are high school dropouts
Regards,Yelena Varsha
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Yelena - as always these posts in the "anything that is not about SQL" forum just crack me up!
One - because they ALWAYS deviate from the original thread and end up in a far off distant land - and two, because it really is fascinating when you have an exchange of ideas and you see how different people react to different things and for the most part different people react to the same thing...
As for insurance claims etc.."lawyer speak" is a whole new language and was carefully designed by scheming, conniving people to leave loopholes that only they can see and weasel out of..you may let your imagination go as wild as you want - you'll seldom win - & no - I don't think they're high school dropouts turned geniuses at the "art of writing disambiguously" - they're a special breed of people trying to get your money and ensure that you never see it again...
oops: hope there're no lawyer/DBAs lurking around who'll burn me at the stake for saying this..
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
Check out this site:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html
One that bothers me a lot is e.g. and i.e.. As others have said, mis-use of apostrophes always bothers me, as does there/their/they're.
Oh, and affect and effect, too.
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