Friends don’t let friends – do any of the below.
Available in Google Labs is a drunk email inhibitor, Mail Goggles, – requiring you to complete math questions before an email will send (during the hours you might have one hand around a bottle and one on your mouse). Clever.
Breathalyzers are fine, but, as a society, we’re in much more trouble than that.
I’d love to see the invention of a basic literacy test before a keyboard will work.
The prototype my brother created:
Thank you Sammy
This needs immediate NASA funding. Otherwise? Our language will be slowly hacked to pieces, sold to the lowest bidder.
A deodorant commercial heard yesterday:
“Leaves less white marks!”
NO! Who put you in charge?
Learn more at Grammar Girl – OR – give up entirely. Million dollar ad campaigns get away with abominable sloppiness – and so can you. Instead, grab a drink and (try to) email someone who doesn’t love you anymore.
The Cold War in your printer (& what you need to do about it)
(Flickr:
Fresh from the bowels of Wikipedia – Ronald Reagan has yet another bizarre credit to his name, proving presidency wasn’t his life’s biggest surprise turn. Go figure.
He’s the reason North Americans load their printers with the stubby stuff, 8.5″ X 11″, while the leaner global population sticks to A4.
Yes, really! The man, the legend, the letter sized paper.
So do a quick recce of your PDFs. Treachery lurks!
Do you send PDF literature between North America & the rest of the world?
Send your recipient a PDF paper type formatted to their printer. They probably won’t notice that you made the effort, which is even better. The annoying margin errors are what they’d find irritating. So ensure you’ve got 2 versions of each: one for the world and one for Reagan’s memory.
As for his extracurricular decrees – the answer to your “wtf” is ably summed up here.
Michael explains:
With the dawn of the computer age and proliferation of photocopiers, the government standard to that date was set by Herbert Hoover in the 1920’s. The standard had been 8″ x 10.5″, which is still used in notebooks today. Since copiers weren’t made to handle that size paper, the decision arrived at Reagan’s desk.
And, quoting wholly out of context – here’s your answer:
“They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.”
Ronald Reagan
Illiterate Bingo – Friday Business Board Games
We live in trying times. Though many among us live in trying time’s.
Last week, Matthew was kind enough to point out the BBC’s 50 worst clichés, a website which features this brilliant tool.
If you don’t work in a corporate office environment but still want to play, hang around an airport lounge, a hotel lobby or a downtown Starbucks. They’ll find you.
Business jargon is like a bad infomercial: so bad it’s good. Our much graver concern, the real axis of evil, is awful, lazy English:
- apostrophe crimes
- lobotomised word choice
- hyphenation abominations
Where my Tapestries of Travesties do all they can to name and shame, I urge you to take to your trenches with a little coping mechanism.
Illiterate Bingo
Keep this sucker on your desktop and, when you score bingo, send back screenshots of your victories (or what little solace we can find in such butchery).
You can fill in the middle slot with the slice of bad language that makes you bleed the most. I’ve already found mine and it’s a bloody zinger. We’re talking triple-threat stuff.
A few rules?
- No picking on non-native English speakers. 99 times out of 100 it’s the native speakers doing the visible damage – those who painstakingly learn English grammar would never dash their hard work with such carelessness.
- No trifling typos. While – knock on wood – I’ve never published a typo that I know of, we’re all mortals and make no promises otherwise. It’s the sloppy folks ruining the internet that I’m after. They’re habitual felons and I implore you to make citizens’ arrests as and when their sorry trail of destruction appears.
Nervous?
Are people going to score points on your blog or website?
Seek help now. 12-step programme: stop killing the apostrophe.
Go forth and take back what we hold sacred!
Screw you, College Board
In the U.S. school system, high school kids rely on strong SAT scores for university acceptance. Until recently, this meant 800 points for math and 800 for verbal skills.
It was a strange system. A student could receive top marks in one category, fail the other and the lopsided genius would end up at the local community college.
It all makes sense now. They were trying to tell us, “You need both math and verbal skills to survive in the real world!” Wonky brains won’t work if you need to switch sides and tip the pizza boy or write a birthday card. So, College Board, I finally concede that I do need mathematics to finesse daily life.
But my math skills only take me so far (usually to the door, with the pizza). We creative types know to hire an accountant or financial help when needs soar beyond our algebraic reach. The converse does not seem to hold true for the math-brained world.
My exhibits A, B and C
This email
The 2 HSBC bank managers (two!) who asked me how to spell Shanghai.
“What does HSBC stand for?!?” I asked, incredulous.
“Why, the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank!” They answered by rote.
“Uh huh….”.
*Blank stare*
“S-H-A-N-G….”
And OnlineMarketer, who will only trust his money to a bank that can handle high school English.
Final score: math geeks 0, cool kids 3
College Board, could you please do some follow up? It seems your left-brained champions need a refresher in their verbal aptitude.
Yea, yea, yea… in 2005 you added a writing section. Too little, too late! Your negligence means there are generations of untested, unashamed illiterates out there.
I think the math crew needs to retire their spell check and give one of us a call.
Related post:
12-step programme: stop killing the apostrophe
Oops.
Every little what helps? Looks like the Telegraph missed their spell check and their proof read.
Call it a case of the Mondays?