Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Learning

I have slept so badly the last couple of nights. I have a cough and when I go to bed it takes on a life of its own and keeps me awake. I really had to drag myself out of bed yesterday morning and force myself to keep going enough to actually get to work and then to do anything vaguely constructive while I was there. G and I are going away for the weekend on Thursday night for a long weekend on the South Coast and I cannot wait.

My over-friendly colleague is on a course for the next two weeks and yet he did still manage to come back to the office and had brought back some biscuits, one of which he deposited on my desk. I did ask him what he had learnt that day and he replied “that a day apart from you is a sad day for me”. I thanked him for the biscuit and hoped that he might learn something else tomorrow.

Yesterday I read that some councils are trying to make officials stop using Latin in their correspondence. I haven’t got any opinions on that particularly, although stopping using words like ‘via’ seems a bit much. But… I was a bit perplexed by the closing sentence “A Campaign spokesman said the ban might stop people confusing the Latin abbreviation e.g. with the word "egg".”

What?? I don’t think I have ever heard anyone mistake e.g. for egg. Surely there must have been a better (and more convincing) example than that? Anyone? Anyone??

3 comments:

Spudgy said...

I'd be thinking your 'friend' at work could have special needs!!!!!

Kahless said...

I hate all this dumbing down of our language. Expand our vocab, yes, but get rid, no!

Enjoy your break.

I have a aussie blogger visiting me this weekend. Gonna be weird meeting my first blogger.

Random Reflections said...

spudgy - I'm not sure I would describe him as a friend more of a colleague who doesn't know the meaning of the words "go away or I will kill you". He didn't come back today though so maybe he really did learn something new today.

kahless - I agree. You need to assess your audience, but we lose so much my banning certain words etc.

I can't wait for Thursday evening...

I hope your meeting goes well. I have met various fellow bloggers and have never had a bad experience and they have all been nice and friendly. I'm sure it will be fine - but do leave details of where you will be at all times in case they turn out to be a serial killer of course.