h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

blimey, Duncan, this is h2g2. There are no prizes but that will be seen as a challenge, surely?

If you're going down that route surely it would be "her were set".

>>Sit (sit/sat/sat) is such an intransitive verb<< (Yelbakk)

If were transitive, you would have to use "to be seated" Which is what Xan was getting at.

I'm easy on it.

"He was sat" feels wrong to me, too, although it doesn't get my back up as much as it does Sho's. But in dialect context or any direct speech, I would accept it.

Personally the actions of the school smacks of social engineering to me.All those children who were physically punished for speaking Gaelic or Welsh was not all that long ago..

It's not "social engineering", it's a laudable attempt to educate children about reality. And the reality is, if they can't write proper English when they need to, they'll suffer.

I'll trot this anecdote out again: my boss in a previous job presented me with a pile of about fifty CVs, and gave me half a morning to whittle it down to five for him to look at. That focused my mind wonderfully.

The central insight I gained was this: I was NOT looking for the five best CVs. I was looking for the forty five worst ones, and I had little time in which to do it, so the selection criteria were, in the first instance, crude. Depressingly, although every single applicant had a degree (and some had postgrad qualifications), I was able to bin easily half the field simply for not bothering to spell check their own CV properly. Your CV is one of the most important documents you will ever prepare in your life. That someone could present one that failed to correctly spell words like "chemical" correctly (when applying for a job as a chemical engineer) I found frankly infuriating. The worst by far was a young man named James B. Liew, who, in large, bold type at the top of his CV had put the words "CIRICULUM VITAE". I retrieved that one from the bin and kept it for a while as the absolutely worst, most unbelievable example of failure of attention to detail I'd ever seen.

It's all very well to talk about valuing diversity and preserving local culture and all that utter, utter shite, but back in the real world if you use incorrect English in your CV, covering letter or personal statement or other similarly important piece of writing, you will fail, and more importantly, you will DESERVE to.

The teacher is trying to help these children. Anyone who would try to stop her is a dangerous moron on a par with those who would teach creationism, and they are worthy only of contempt.

You're right that you do yourself no favours if you don't get your CV right, but the sad thing is you do your prospective employer no favours either.

It's very difficult recruiting the right candidate. It's's hard enough seeing through all the guff that people are told to write about how well qualified/experienced/capable they are that you don't see whether a) they're a good fit and b) they're motivated. I'd hate to lose one because someone's filtered them out on other criteria.

Get the grammar and spelling right, for sure, but summarise in the first half page who you are, what you can do and what you're looking for in your next job. I won't read much further otherwise. I'll forgive the odd language errors if I'm liking what I'm reading.

"what if it's based in the USA and decides to get rid of the U in colour? or saying that theatre is wrong and from now it must be theater?" [Sho]

Those two examples seem perfectly sensible to me, but then I'm American. In any case, spelling differences would not be detectable in the spoken language. "Color" and "colour" would sound the same, wouldn't they?

Then there are idioms, which are a horse of a different color.

`Icy north

'

I'd hate to have someone who didn't double check something important in their design...your profession might value good fit/motivation...so does mine/Hoo's...however our profession values designing things that won't explode and kill people slightly more.

I'm not too bothered about a minor speeling mistake on a CV but the CIRICULUM VITAE one is a major first line mistake and that shows a major blind spot that I would hate to have in someone designing any process that I or others had to work around.

Icy North



Those type of summaries get binned by me for the roles I look for - I can scan through what people have done to get an idea of whether they have the required techy experience.

Basically, I will know the answers to the following:

who you are: Chemical Engineer

what you can do: look at my jobs list below

what you're looking for in your next job: more money and not working with feckwits.

That is honestly what I'll look for - any bullhooks about motivated team worker etc...stuff that I'd assume you are and simply writing it on a CV says nothing.

Fine, but when you're trying to recruit James Dyson, do you want a shortlist of Giles Brandreths?

Details matter a lot to engineers. Spelling is a detail that should give a clue. On the other hand, it must be possible to be a good speller but a poor engineer......

I'm saying it's wrong to be too prescriptive, although there will clearly be professions where a single criterion is enough to exclude candidates at the outset. Not sure Chemical engineering/grammar is necessarily it, though.

It's a bit like that 80s rock band, Europe. The contracts for their live shows stipulated that a bowl of M&Ms be supplied that did not contain brown M&Ms. This was not because the band did not like brown M&Ms, but for another reason: If band did find brown M&Ms in their bowl, then they knew that their contractors had not paid attention to all the details, which meant that they would double check all the fuses and switches that controlled their lightning and pyrotechnics show.

Getting back to the original topic, I've heard that the most agreeable regional accent in the U.S. is the Midwestern one -- Ohio, for instance. Many companies have telephone help centers located in Omaha, Nebraska. I assume that this is because the people who answer those phones can be understood by pretty much anybody who calls.

It was Van Halen, not Europe, Yelbakk - more info here: A42130153

Icy North




You know full well that the information of actual experience on the CV would mean you would short list engineers with the requisite experience.

Thanks for correcting me, Icy.

{You know full well that the information of actual experience on the CV would mean you would short list engineers with the requisite experience.}

OK, it was a bit flippant of me. What I'm trying to say is that the best fit may not always be the candidate with the best grammar, so be wary of filtering them out. I've most recently recruited a couple of programmers and analysts. Many of the applications came from folks for whom English wasn't their first language. I eventually recruited a guy from India and one from Turkey. Both drove me mad at the beginning with their English, but they settled in quickly and earned the respect of the team. Both also demonstrated to me how much they wanted the job and were keen to succeed, which was probably the most important criterion of all.

Icy North
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{You know full well that the information of actual experience on the CV would mean you would short list engineers with the requisite experience.}



I've been in the same situation as Hoo, as has many in our profession.

It IS the best way to whittle down the people. Probably 15 out of 50 people will be able to do the job to pretty much the level required however you are never going to get the perfect person but you should be able to get a good enough person. Therefore, the first filter on speeling mistakes etc is the best way to do it - it's harsh but that's life - if we knew we wouldn't get a suitable person by doing it that way then we wouldn't do it but knocking out 10 CVs due to speling misteaks is a fair way.

It would seem we are looking for different types of people...personally I'd rather have someone who did exactly what Hoo did for me rather than go through everyone as Hoo's method showed a practical method for getting to the required number of CVs in a short amount of time. It meant that tehre was more time to spend a little longer looking at a few correctly presented CVs rather than going quickly through 50.

Oh yes let's get rid of all character and originality.


Or how about realising that one can speak dialect in one's own social group and yet KNOW that one must speak correctly and use correct grammar when applying for a university place or writing a CV.

Frankly I'd hate to work for some folk in this conversation especially if they speak to people in real life the way they do here.