Sunday 19 August 2012
Busman's holiday
I was trying to get to Glasgow Airport from Partick bus station the other day. The information I found at the bus stop didn't help me much. Can you deduce from this whether or when the airport bus gets to the airport?
Friday 3 August 2012
The cuts
This story illustrates a couple of rules about cutting and pasting — an issue I encounter all the time in my job as an editor.
First, make sure you're clear about:
Second, if you fail to take note of any of these points: make sure there's no chance that the people reading the passage in the original and those reading the copy will compare notes. (This happened to me at university once, when our lecturer gave identical feedback to me and two other students even though we'd written completely different proposals for a piece of work. He ended up looking a bit foolish, at least to us.)
This story also illustrates a point in my earlier blog about confusing nomenclature. Why is the company carrying out inspection reports on Ofsted's behalf called Tribal? It may be that they carry out all sorts of other functions, but in what way does that name describe any of them?
Compare this to, say, the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers or (a favourite of mine) the Scottish Association of Master Bakers: you need no information beyond their name to work out what they do for a living. Is Tribal's obfuscation an unfortunate side-effect of trying to sound hip and modern, or part of a deliberate effort to make the important work they do less transparent?
Similarly, compare Ofsted with Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education, which we still had in Scotland until recently, though always shortened to HMIe. The 'Of-' prefix for official bodies (Ofgem, Ofqual, Ofwat) has become almost as much of a cliche as the '-gate' suffix for political scandals. HMIe is now part of Education Scotland, itself part of the trend towards replacing adjectives or verbs with nouns in names of organisations. Compare Scottish Rugby Union (founded in 1873) with Scotland Rugby League (founded in 1997).
The message remains the same: whenever you use a word — whether as part of a written or spoken sentence, or as a proper noun in a name — it's always worth considering whether there's a clearer one you could use instead.
First, make sure you're clear about:
- what text you're cutting
- where you're cutting it from
- where you're pasting it to (you'd be surprised how often these first three are overlooked)
- whether copyright rules allow you to do so
- whether it might be better to use new text instead
Second, if you fail to take note of any of these points: make sure there's no chance that the people reading the passage in the original and those reading the copy will compare notes. (This happened to me at university once, when our lecturer gave identical feedback to me and two other students even though we'd written completely different proposals for a piece of work. He ended up looking a bit foolish, at least to us.)
This story also illustrates a point in my earlier blog about confusing nomenclature. Why is the company carrying out inspection reports on Ofsted's behalf called Tribal? It may be that they carry out all sorts of other functions, but in what way does that name describe any of them?
Compare this to, say, the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers or (a favourite of mine) the Scottish Association of Master Bakers: you need no information beyond their name to work out what they do for a living. Is Tribal's obfuscation an unfortunate side-effect of trying to sound hip and modern, or part of a deliberate effort to make the important work they do less transparent?
Similarly, compare Ofsted with Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education, which we still had in Scotland until recently, though always shortened to HMIe. The 'Of-' prefix for official bodies (Ofgem, Ofqual, Ofwat) has become almost as much of a cliche as the '-gate' suffix for political scandals. HMIe is now part of Education Scotland, itself part of the trend towards replacing adjectives or verbs with nouns in names of organisations. Compare Scottish Rugby Union (founded in 1873) with Scotland Rugby League (founded in 1997).
The message remains the same: whenever you use a word — whether as part of a written or spoken sentence, or as a proper noun in a name — it's always worth considering whether there's a clearer one you could use instead.
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