I spent today on a training session about the college enrolment process.
I knew we were in for a rough ride (linguistically speaking) when the opening speaker (a deputy principal of the college) said (and this is verbatim)

"Since the college financial situation has come to light we have made great strides into the hole we have made."

It went downhill. The power point presentations hadn't been spell checked or proof read so that there were many glaring errors and one of the speakers set my teeth on edge with a pet hate phrase "equally as important as".
One slide read
"...in these cases the fees are the parent's responsibility."
I know we live in a world with many single parent families but I'm sure that some children have two.

However the icing on the cake was at the end of a long and very dull presentation on quality procedures when, having finished, the speaker asked

"Any questions?"

and illustrated it with a very large - the screen was 25 foot square - powerpoint slide saying in big friendly letters

ANY QUESTION'S ?

It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. We're a college for God's sake.

ANY QUESTION'S ?

Wouldn't you know that Bob had to be in the audience with an error like that?

Speaking as a college deputy principal, I am quite shocked and feel like defending the tremendous honour of the exalted position. First though, what is wrong with 'equally as important as'?

Quote "...First though, what is wrong with 'equally as important as'?..."

I would think that it is tautological. "...As important as..." would seem sufficient to convey the meaning of equality.

I see and don't disagree.

What about 'just as important' or even 'just as big'. Is the phrase, 'I'm just as clever as you', tautologically incorrect?

Remember this from one of my college meetings?

Well, this Wednesday we had a whole series of presentations. The first slide of one presentation included nine separate punctuation mistakes including:


a plural formed with an apostrophe
a plural formed with a comma
inconsistent use of bullet point markers
three inappropriately capitalised words, one of which was a verb, in the middle of a sentence
an unhyphenated stand-alone

The department responsible?

Adult literacy.

Someone should lose their job. I spent most of yesterday telling everyone that we should run a proof-reading course.

And I almost forgot the spelling mistake in the title "STRUCTUR".

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

quote:

Someone should lose their job. I spent most of yesterday telling everyone that we should run a proof-reading course.

I am not convinced that it is a training need. There are plenty of competent proof-readers around (Stewart Wild being just one). But he tells me that many companies do not now use proof-readers, relying instead on computerised spelling and grammar checking systems.

It's a question of spending the time and/or money simply to do the job - and most companies are simply too mean.

I consider myself more than averagely literate but I have all my publications externally proofed three times - in addition to my own checking and the computerised systems. And I consider that to be no more than adequate.

But I fully agree that it is a disgrace; how can anyone claim to be competent to teach literacy when he or she is apparently illiterate?

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:

I am not convinced that it is a training need. There are plenty of competent proof-readers around

True but you don't go to the time and expense of hiring an external proof-reader for every piddling little PowerPoint presentation or single page emailed memo you are giving or sending to your own staff. The college would be bankrupt in a week. Probably in a day. (Possibly an hour, given the number of memos we get sent.)

Being able to proof-read your own writing is an essential skill. I am absolutely sure the person giving the presentation would be able to find all the errors on it, she's an experienced GCSE English teacher. Bottom line is, she couldn't be bothered to proof-read it before using it. That's the unforgivable thing.

I was at a national conference once where the presenters said they'd give candy to anyone who found a typo in their presentation! It was great. All of us librarians paid very good attention . . . but they must have presented it before and done the same thing, because we found none!

I've since adopted the same practice. Of course I proof read everything I present multiple times, and ask a few co-workers to do the same. Then, I keep candy in my presentation suitcase and throw it out to people who find errors in the PP. By the time we go to the national conference, we should be error free!

(I also throw candy at people who answer questions)

quote:

True but you don't go to the time and expense of hiring an external proof-reader for every piddling little PowerPoint presentation or single page emailed memo you are giving or sending to your own staff.

Not for internal memos, I agree, but for PowerPoint presentations it should be done. If not externally then certainly internally by another. Self-checking is fine, of course, but in my experience, no matter how many times you check your own work, errors will creep in and you'll miss them. I suspect it's due to the fact that you read your own work several times and, after the second or third time, you see what you expect to see - not necessarily what's actually written.

I always ask Margaret to check my work if I'm not having it professionally proofed; she spotted two errors in the last article I wrote for Travel Bulletin, that I'd missed in spite of several re-readings.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:

, but for PowerPoint presentations it should be done. If not externally then certainly internally by another. Self-checking is fine, of course, but in my experience, no matter how many times you check your own work, errors will creep in and you'll miss them.

If we are talking about getting the guy on the next desk to look then I agree completely.

The difficulty is with external checking.

If you or your organisation does one PowerPoint a year or one a month maybe it's OK. If your college does twenty a day around the college, more if you count those few of us confident enough in our IT skills to use presentations as part of our lessons, then the cost rapidly becomes prohibitive. I know there are those who will say this is false economy but tell me what would be the point of ensuring everything is perfect with the result that the college closes? It's not much use people saying, "South Birmingham, what a great college that was, such lovely presentations. Pity they had to close."

We sail very close to the shores of bankruptcy as it is and yet another set of Government funding changes are driving us ever closer to the rocks. Any additional expenses could sink us.

(I kind of wish I hadn't started on that metaphor.)

quote:

We sail very close to the shores of bankruptcy as it is and yet another set of Government funding changes are driving us ever closer to the rocks. Any additional expenses could sink us.

(I kind of wish I hadn't started on that metaphor.)

Why? I kind of like the imagery, and your meaning is quite clear.

Of course, on reading it back, as quoted above, I've spotted the grammatical error that careless haste caused.

I'll go and write out a hundred times

set of Government funding changes is
set of Government funding changes is

Remind me never to give a presentation to Bob.

CW, I love your tossing candy idea! Is your audience adults?

quote:

CW, I love your tossing candy idea! Is your audience adults?

I don't usually use sweets (candy) but I often give prizes to my groups. It's surprising how a prize worth just a couple of quid promotes vigorous competition!

quote:

CW, I love your tossing candy idea! Is your audience adults?

You bet! A little bit of chocolate goes a long way towards gaining involvement! I often used Hershey's Kisses or some other small, individually wrapped chocolate like that.