#12950
12/26/2000 3:17 PM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204 |
But it was the times tables which were my bete noir Yes, CapK, I always had problems with those - espec. the 7 times, for some reason! But learning by rote really works for that exercise, and I have, like you, been forever grateful that I was made to learn them. I also discovered the other day that I can still calculate in £-s-d - including division (!) - in my head. Now whether this says anything for my early training or just proves what a sad bastard I am, I'm not sure 
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#12951
12/26/2000 7:37 PM
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891 |
Question...
What on earth is calculating in LSD. The only LSD I am aware of is the stuff the hippies used to take in the 70`s that made them trippy.
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#12952
12/26/2000 11:15 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
What on earth is calculating in LSD.Ooh, bel--what an invitation! 
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#12953
12/27/2000 8:54 AM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,004
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,004 |
belM
What you interpreted (cleverly) as LSD, are actually the symbols for currency in the UK, pre-1970: £(Pounds), s (Shillings) and d(Pence - from denarii, don't ask, we were very influenced by the Romans). The reason why Rhuby is proud of his ability to use it is not because he was hippy-trippy in the '60s (though he may well have been - given the tale of his car and its decorations), but because the currency, not being decimal, was virtually impossible to calculate in - almost as bad as doing multiplication and division in Roman Numerals.
cheer
the sunshine (glad to have lived primarily in decimal times) warrior
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#12954
12/27/2000 12:00 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
Yes, but trying to calculate in LSD while nicely stoked on LSD would surely be an interesting way to pass the time. One of my younger colleagues informs me that she can't do anything involving mental effort while on ecstacy. She seemed unimpressed with my rejoinder that I often have problems with or without mind-altering substances - with the sole exception of caffeine.  Still - what's wrong with twelve pence to the shilling, twenty shillings to the pound and twenty-one to the guinea? It was only 1967 when we changed in New Zealand. I remember it all very well ...
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12955
01/06/2001 6:19 AM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 866
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 866 |
If you've seen my profile you'll know 2 key things about me - I'm a wordaholic AND I'm a Recruitment Consultant for a company similar to your Sheffield Consulting I believe. So, for the past 7 years in this job I have been tormented daily by this matter.
I place around 50-60 people per year, representing around 2,500 applicants per year. Add to this a substantial number of unsolicited enquiries & CV's and we're talking 3,000 CV's per year over my desk.
Amongst other things, we test each shortlisted candidate's "Verbal Reasoning" skills and report them as a percentile against an appropriate statistical population (in our case between 500 and 5000 previous "test-ees" - bit of recruitment humour there!!) As we are inevitably dealing with tertiary qualified people, it is (I suppose) pleasing to report that the great majority fall in the upper 50th percentile - because we're comparing them to each other and not ranking them by the correctness.
The crunch comes when doing referee checks - I doubt if there's been more than 1 or 2 final candidates over the past 7 years whose referees praised their report writing skills. Most referees tend to be 40-60 years old and thus, like me, place weight upon spelling and writing skills. However they almost all inevitably sigh and say (after giving me the bad news), "Well, that's the way it seems to be these days".
Unfortunately Cap K, IT seems to be the worst hit area. I've no doubt that this is due to the overwhelming percentage of IT specialists that have English as a 2nd language. Inevitably it is not rated as a serious problem by the employer though - they are more interested in the candidate's technical skills and their "Abstract Reasoning" (ie problem solving) score. Pleasingly, most lie in the top 10th percentile - they are bright cookies.
Simply speaking, I believe the weight you and I place upon literacy is a dying thing an dthat nothing can or will be done about it. Pessimist no, realist yes.
And now, more recruitment humour....
Irrespective of their programming ability, I for one get all heated up when the page designer puts poor English onto company web pages. When I was looking to sign up with an ISP, I researched the pages of the local companies to compare rates etc. One Perth-based company was signing its own praises loudly and promoting itself as "your partner is small business" etc for ISP, web page design and so on. Well, the splash page alone had 13 howlers!! I couldn't help myself so, with tongue firmly in cheek, emailed the Managing Director (who'd thoughtfully provided his direct email address for the purpose). I pointed out the errors one by one (no small task!!) and then suggested that, seeing I was in recruitment, maybe we could talk about recruiting a proof reader for the web design aspects of his compay's service.
Never heard from him - BUT the site was fixed within the week!!
stales
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#12956
01/06/2001 9:47 AM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
I wouldn't class myself as a wordaholic (a view probably resoundingly seconded by the rest of the crew on this board), but I do have standards. My firm uses a form of the VIT which is, I believe, not standard. It actually makes people consider the syntactic and semantic content of what they are responding to rather than just allowing them to scan for the general sense. Don't ask me for details; I don't have 'em - that's our HR people's job and one which I'm quite happy to leave them to. Obviously, nothing in what you say surprises me, but thanks for the corroboration that it's not just a local problem. My problem is that I get involved in recruitment of people who must have a good mix of technical (for content) and written (for presentation and clarity) skills. In other words, we're hiring them for their ability to write reports as much, if not more, than for their ability to write programs, design networks, write HTML or whatever. As a matter of fact since I started this thread off I've persuaded the general manager that a dedicated technical writer/proofreader with good mentoring skills is a necessary addition to the team, and that getting the right skills will not be cheap. It's going into the 2001/2 budget and I'll be putting the JD out to our preferred recruitment agencies at the beginning of February. The process takes about three weeks once we have identified the candidates. Note that most of our candidates are native English speakers. Or English writers gone native in most cases, unfortunately ... We've been tossing around ideas about how to raise the general standards of literacy (any suggestion would be MOST welcome). One suggestion was that we should use our training department to do the work. However I pointed out that the standards of literacy among the trainers (including the ones "teaching" business writing) were none too solid. This is a work in progress, unfortunately, with no agreed approach determined yet. My ISP (ClearNet) is actually very good. They obviously have someone who can read and write without difficulty managing their site content. But, like you, I have seen some real doozies. Unlike you, I couldn't give a rat's a--, and haven't bothered trying to change them! 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12957
01/06/2001 4:13 PM
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
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Depending upon the way you present your proofreader, you might be able to give him a secondary role as teacher. For example, if the proofreader simply corrects other people’s work nobody really learns anything. But if the proofreader underlines the things that must be corrected and has the person correct his own errors, then, that tends to stick in a person’s mind (remember your school days).
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#12958
01/06/2001 5:03 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
That had crossed my mind, bel. However, we are generally - not always, but usually - up against tight time constraints. Pogoing a report back and forth with marked corrections/corrected prose is a luxury. Well, we'll see!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12959
01/06/2001 8:50 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439 |
we are generally - not always, but usually - up against tight time constraints. Pogoing a report back and forth with marked corrections/corrected prose is a luxury.Dear CapK, Our newspaper took the approach that a two-hour meeting every other week was do-able and an English teacher came in and shredded our egos -- no, not really, -- by the simple expedient of reading some of the stuff we wrote then telling us why it was wrong and how not to do it again. Long involved sentences : recast. Long words : simplify. etc. etc. He was strong and cut to the bone but never named a name or placed blame. We all improved. What tickled the reporters most was that he presumed headlines were fair game, too. Some  red faced editors who had thought they were safe were quite taken aback.  I was so impressed I talked him into doing a savaging of my deathless prose once a month and paid for it myself. It was great! In his defense I must say my prose has deteriorated since I left the biz and no longer have available his pithy observations on my current efforts. This any help? wow
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#12960
01/06/2001 10:14 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 8
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 8 |
As a newly "renaissanced" (my euphemism for "retired" :-) high school English teach, boy-oh-boy, do I have lots to say on this subject! ... lst, from my perspective, things are getting better due to the public awareness that they have to or we're all in trouble: parents are on notice, teachers always have been (imho :), & so are the students themselves. We haven't, unfortunately, quite reverted to the old days when kids could read the classics in "grammar school" (as my own mother could, e.g.), but I think we'll eventually get there. So, in a word, there is hope. Take the Chicago Public Schools, my bailiwick -- we have a great CEO who has had fabulous success in getting our system back-to-basics in a few years (with thanks to the Mayor for appointing him & to the CTU for working with him, &, oh yes, to us teachers behind the proverbial throne :-). Of course, as with any innovative process, a lot of mistakes get made, but they do get corrected, & , of course, if they would ever get around to asking us teachers what we think, all of the literacy problems would be solved! One thing I do know, do assure you, is that the majority of teachers are wearing themselves out trying to teach: their hearts are in the right place (definitely not in their pocketbooks), but because of the problems with things non-educational (like guns, e.g., ahem), their job has become Sisyphus-like, difficult in mythological proportions, &, truly, I'm not exaggerating. [Btw, I'm not worn out, but I was good & tired when I renaissanced, & have nothing but empathy for those of my ilk still trying to roll that ol' boulder whatever up the hill.] In case you might be interested in another teacher's methods... I would make editing (of grammar, usage, orthography, etc. :-) another lesson after my students handed in their writing [the rational being that "after" lessened the worry about making errors during the creating process]. I'd tell my students that I was their editor, the kind that professional writers have the benefit of, & that the items I'd correct (whether red, blue, or fuschia penciled) were not admonishments ("You made a mistake!") but rather tips, gifts of my time & expertise, additional learning tools. I think -- I hope! -- it helped them. (One of the "aches" in teacher [that there was an "ache" is something my teacher-mother wrote decades ago] is that you don't always know if your students are truly getting what you want to give -- some things can't always be measured by tests.) I loved "teaching" writing in all its aspects. The trouble is that we also had to teach required literary selections, & most of these became reading lessons, they were so challenging in vocabulary, ad infinitum, and therefore, they took an endless amount of time to cover -- if we wanted our students to understand what they had to read. With all my heart, I wish there had been more humor in the required literature, something the kids would enjoy spending time on, rather than the seriousness of social &/or historical issues. Even though we would try to make it challenging & fun in some way, much of it was dreary & depressing, rather than uplifting & inspiring. So that is a curriculum change I would recommend -- if I were ever asked. :-) Uh oh, I'm getting off the soapbox now, & my apologies for getting pedantic. :-) My main point is that there is hope for the future, that students will again want to learn, are wanting to (at least from my observations), & meanwhile, parents like yourselves are doing just what they should be doing -- it's obvious from your posts to this forum: One has to care first, right, & it's to be applauded that you certainly do. If only some of my wonderful teenagers had had parents like you, they would have had a much easier time of it. Wispy (a.k.a. Renaissanced :-)
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#12961
01/08/2001 7:23 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
If you could do as WOW suggests-- i know being here has helped me--nothing quite like having an idea, or poorly phrased sentence ripped to shred-- and i sense everyone is looking for them--not to criticize me, but to have some fun, and if i provide the fodder– well all the better. It will be some day before i never get to open my mouth just to change feet... not that i want to do it on a daily basis.
i make much worse verbal bloopers--
when i first started to work for Xerox, i fixed the machines. One day the timing on a machine was off-- the 7mm(head size) by 15mm long screw had sheared the timing disk was slipping on the shaft. I had lots of 7mm by 10mm screws--standard equipment but no screws the right size..
I called up a supervisor, and explained my predicament. He called back right away, and was still laughing.. he said i left him the best voice mail message he ever got.. I couldn't understand. later that day, he made me listen to what i said to him..
"I need a screw--and i was wondering if you have one long enough? can we meet at the parts center, as i am just about to take a break for lunch, and could give me the screw. (i then went on to explain i needed a 7mm by 15 mm screw...)
Until i heard what i said.. i hadn't thought about how it sounded...
Wow idea is a good one, since its not like school --punitive-- but it is instructional.. done right, it could help..
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#12962
01/09/2001 4:37 AM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
I've been reading these posts and not commenting. Wow's idea seems reasonable, but would take a major feat of organisation to implement (we have people spread all over the show, and not all of them work for me or my boss). I'll run it up the proverbial and see who salutes. It would appear that the idea of a proofreader/technical writer may yet fly - it didn't get slashed during the second budget focus meeting. I'll also recommend to my female colleagues that they don't ask for screws over the phone. After I get out of hospital, I'll see what I can do. Thanks, but keep the ideas coming, please!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12963
01/09/2001 9:07 AM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393 |
nothing but empathy for those of my ilk still trying to roll that ol' boulder whatever up the hill.]
In case you might be interested in another teacher's methods... I would make editing (of grammar, usage, orthography, etc. :-) another lesson after my students handed in their writing
Okay, I can't pass this one up, especially as you go on to say my apologies for getting pedantic. :-) So I'm sure you'll take this in the right spirit.
There is no such thing as an ilk: it's not a kind or kidney or class. The word means 'same' and exists only by virtue of the expression 'of that ilk', where 'that' is an oblique case of 'the'. It is used in territorial designations of Scottish families: where there is a place called, say, Hamilton, giving rise to a surname of Hamilton (or de Hamilton). If this family then spreads it is necessary to differentiate the Hamiltons of Strathcona from the Hamiltons of Hamilton. These latter are called Hamilton of that Ilk, i.e. Hamilton of the same.
As this is a technical term of heraldry or land tenure, I think it's a mistake to misuse it and misuse can't be sanctioned by continued usage.
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#12964
01/09/2001 9:15 AM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
I think it's a mistake to misuse it and misuse can't be sanctioned by continued usage.Rather begging the question. The imposition or withholding of sanction isn't our call, it will be taken by the misusers. The end result may or may not be a permanent change which becomes the "accepted" usage. You been reading Cervantes again, NicholasW?
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12965
01/09/2001 4:53 PM
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
stales:
you said: > Amongst other things, we test each shortlisted candidate's "Verbal Reasoning" skills and report them as a percentile against an appropriate statistical population (in our case between 500 and 5000 previous "test-ees" - bit of recruitment humour there!!) As we are inevitably dealing with tertiary qualified people, it is (I suppose) pleasing to report that the great majority fall in the upper 50th percentile - because we're comparing them to each other and not ranking them by the correctness.
If you are testing them among themselves, the great majority cannot fall into the upper 50th percentile, can they? If I remember my stats course correctly, exactly one half will fall into the upper 50th percentile and one half will fall below.
TEd
PS
What's a tertiary qualified person? From the context I assume it's someone who is qualified for education above the secondary level, i.e., a person who would be accepted at university.
TR
TEd
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#12966
01/09/2001 5:10 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 866
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 866 |
It's a fair cop guv.
The original text lacked the percentile bit and thus looked a bit wishy washy. Didn't think through all the ramifications of my partial rewrite.
Very surprised that you are unfamiliar with the term "tertiary qualifications". It's one of those that are are taken for granted and in everyday use here in Oz. We refer to primary (school years K-6 or 7), secondary (6 or 7-10 or 12) and tertiary (University, college etc) education. Thus tertiary qualifications are degrees, diplomas etc. Trade qualifications on the other hand, are typically commenced at the end of Year 10, in lieu of Year 11 and 12.
stales
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#12967
01/09/2001 6:16 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
NicholasW states: I think it's a mistake to misuse it and misuse can't be sanctioned by continued usage.
CapK retorts: The imposition or withholding of sanction isn't our call
If Humpty Dumpty was wrong to assign a definition to a word arbitrarily, would he be wrong if he were also to deny a definition to a word arbitrarily?
This particular misuse is, at least according to the AHD, over one hundred years old.
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#12968
01/09/2001 7:10 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
W3 - which is admittedly a snapshot rather than a history - gives ilk a separate entry as "family, sort, kind", a synonym of type, and has the following citation:
<determinists, materialists, agnostics, behaviorists and their ilk -John Dewey>
(must be part of the Dewey classification system ;)
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#12969
01/09/2001 7:48 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
>"tertiary qualifications"
Yep, we use it to. It tends to be used when discussing the kind of job which assumes that the majority of candidates have achieved a degree or equivalent, without having to go into extensive lists.
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#12970
01/10/2001 4:49 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 8
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 8 |
"He and all his ilk" is the example given for an idiomatic use according to my Random House Webster's College Dictionary . So, am I forgiven?
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