atw: Re: Youse
- From: "Neil Maloney" <maloneyn@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 20:59:04 +1100
Peter Martin wrote:
> Prithee (a word that deserves rebirth) , what was wrong with the bit in
> brackets about spraying to kill insects ?
Gramercy, yes, I believe it's all situational, isn't it? Disinsection has been
in use as an accepted word in aviation for yonks, googling it gives 55,000
hits, but we don't hear of anyone getting the pest company out to disinsect
their home.
.... the explanation in the brackets was for the benefit of those in the
Austechwriter list who have not run across the word before. The manual in
question did not need an explanation included because the word is in very
common use (in aviation) and is widely known and understood. I changed
"disinsection" to "disinfection" at the time because it was an obvious typo,
wasn't it? After all, who'd ever heard of "disinsection" as a word? Those damn
subject matter experts, doing their own typing and not being careful to carry
out a spelling check afterwards !!! Well, after all these years, I'm still in
the process of learning how often I can be wrong and, with the type of
documents that I work with, that encourages me to be v-e-r-y careful indeed
about changing words I don't recognise (e.g. don't change "pitot" to "pilot"),
making sure I don't type "10,000 ft" as "1,000 ft" (the pilot would probably
hit a mountain or two if silly enough to fly the aircraft according to that
particular typo) and to always review the clarity of my writing because
ambiguity kills.
Terry Dowling wrote:
>Thanks for understanding what I was trying to say. However, this little gem…
>:-)
>What I most strongly agree with is that there are no "correct" answers..
>How would we pass exams? I would more likely say there is not necessarily one
>correct answer -- but there are also >lots of ways to make things wrong. :)
No, no, no ... by which I mean yes, yes, yes .... there always is a correct
answer for the situation you are in at the time, but the correct answer for a
driving exam may not be the correct answer for a diving exam, even though the
alcohol levels for both may be the same (don't know). The language and writing
style I use for a Flight Operations Manual can and should be different to how I
used to write letters to my nephew when he was 6 years old (I now have the
pleasure of sending my 18 year old nephew SMS texts which he doesn't reply to).
Which style / use of grammar is correct? Swap them around and they are both
"wrong" in the context of who I am writing for and what I am trying to achieve.
So, I don't think we can have English grammar / writing style / spelling exams
in perfect isolation. If they are being held as part of a schooling system then
fine, the measure of them is the curriculum. That doesn't mean they should or
do carry across into everyone's workplace, eh? When I was working in the
training development area of Westpac for (mumblety-peg) years, there was a
Westpac Corporate Style Guide we had to follow, and we did whether we agreed
with every particular bit of it or not. I would hazard that that style guide
would not suit the "harder" style of technical documents required in the mining
industry, but that's just a very broad guess. I tried to use that style guide
as a baseline standards document for a job I did for the CommBank (a computer
based tutorial introducing PeopleSoft) and got shouted down by the Andersen's
team managing the project. So, when I say there's no "correct answer", I am
saying there is no single response ("answer") that everyone in the forum will
agree with. Or, to put it another way, there is no "gauge" in "language" that
we can all use to measure each other with. Nor do I subscribe to
post-modernism; some rules are required – they just need to be appropriate
ones. I'll have the final answer when I am dead, have gone to heaven, and have
a chance to speak with Metatron about it, let me get back to you then, in the
meantime I'm just flummoxing around trying to say I think each of us is right
in our own individual situations ...
Neil.
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