Third Alien Shore

In a struggle to be happy and free

Drystone Wall

Category: writing Page 2 of 3

The deserving

by

On Fri August 21, 2009

In consequences, writing

Ars Technica posted an article called “Uncouth Facebook postings closing doors for job candidates.” It reports that 45% of U.S. employers look up prospective employees on social networking sites.

If you think I’m going to lament the privacy of these prospective employees, you’re wrong. They put it out there so why shouldn’t employers read it? Goodness, if you’re going to get smashed and pass-out on your front lawn, the home visit scheduled by the adoption agency won’t go so well. This is no different.

One paragraph was particularly interesting in that it detailed the things people post that could put them at a disadvantage when it comes time to choose who gets the job. The last was this gem:

The one that made us cringe? “16 percent dismissed a candidate for using text language such as GR8 (great) in an e‑mail or job application.”

On a job application? Goodness.

Headlines

by

On Mon December 22, 2008

In writing

The CBC News site has a story called “Russian police end protest against auto tariffs.”

My first thought was, “Why are the Russian police protesting auto tarrifs?!”

It just impacted on the surface

by

On Wed November 19, 2008

In science, writing

WikiNews posted an article titled “India’s flag landed on Moon” on Saturday. Here are the first two sentences of the article:

At 8:34 p.m. Indian time Friday night (1504 UTC), India became the fourth country to land its flag on the Moon. The unmanned lunar orbiter Chandrayaan‑1 ejected its Moon Impact Probe, which hurtled across the surface of the Moon at 1.5 kilometres per second (3000 miles per hour), and successfully crash landed near the Moon’s south pole.

I think “successfully crash landed” is about the worst way to describe what happened. It sounds contradictory, like a poor attempt to spin a horrible disaster. I would go with “impacted the lunar surface” or something similar.

No entry for ‘out of the office’

by

On Wed November 5, 2008

In silliness, writing

Living in the capital city of a country in which the federal government is an officially bilingual entity, I know at least one person involved in translation. It’s simple fact of life here. I can’t say I’ve ever seen it collide with e‑mail “out of office” auto-responses, however. Until now.

All the road signs in Wales are bilingual. They’re English and Welsh. I gather that like French in Canada, it’s not all that difficult to find people in Wales who do not speak any Welsh at all. How else can one explain this sign:

The English portion is straight-forward, but the other part, in Welsh, is not a translation of the English text. Instead, it says, “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.” Seriously.

Someone sent the English text to the in-house translation service and when the response came, they stuck it on the sign. Simple, right?

Hat tip to BBC News.

They did ‘write me back!’

by

On Thu May 29, 2008

In writing

 Dee wrote an interesting comment (thanks Dee!) about my BBC News posting. Part of what she said is:

I think my assumption would be that ‘whatever is between the quotes’ is something that someone has said; so I’d expect to read the article and find that they interviewed someone who said what was quoted in the headline. Of course, I don’t know whether that’s the case with BBC.

This is an excellent suggestion, and while I didn’t consciously think of it, I didn’t believe it was true. Part of the reason is the ‘quotes’ are so short that there doesn’t seem to be any point. Also, doing this for three words in a six word headline seems pointless. Dee also pointed out the English use double-quotes where we use single, and vice versa. I do admit I’d completely forgotten this.

I went back to each of the five articles whose headlines I used in my message to BBC news. Four of them did not contain the quoted text appearing in the their headlines. The exception was the Mars lander article and it did contain “in good health” in the opening paragraph, and it wasn’t a quote. Bizarre.

To my surprise, an anonymous soul at the BBC did write me back this morning.

Dear Rick,

They are used to indicate attribution and differentiate from statements of fact.

I hope this helps.

I’m not sure if that’s a single use or two separate uses. Still, it doesn’t help me really understand when I compare the explanation to the headlines themselves. It doesn’t say they’re quotes, so that’s out. It seems to say they’re a kind of quote, but not verbatim. In a headline, I still see them doing more harm than good.

But hey, it’s their site.

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