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[personal profile] chomiji

And can anyone tell me what "RSVP" stands for? And why I am removing the "please" that everyone keeps inserting before it on the official invitations to events like retirement celebrations?

I am sure that someone is going to call me sometime and ask why I am making the online versions of the invitations less polite. But people, c'mon! It means

Répondez s'il-vous-plaît   (= "Please respond" in French)

And I don't want "Please respond if you please" on my (OK, our) intranet site, thankyouverymuch.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled non-nitpicky life.

Date: 2007-05-08 05:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com
"ATM machine", which I catch myself saying periodically. And luckily I *don't* say "Rio Grande River".

It's the same linguisitc thing that creates stuff like "Torpenhowe Hill", I expect ("Hill hill hill Hill" - I forgot what language 'howe' is, but each successive wave of linguistic invaders took the local word for 'hill' and added their own to it).

Date: 2007-05-08 05:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com
* Oops, sorry, "Torpenhow Hill". I think that tor is Norman, although I could be misremembering. And apparently there's some argument in linguistic circles and one of the elements may mean something different, but there's at least two 'hills' in there.

Date: 2007-05-08 07:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com
Hahahahahaha ... lawyers and language! *twitch* Yes, I know a technical writer who works for a law firm, and have been the recipient of many of his rants.

I don't have to deal with that, instead I have to deal with people who put scare quotes around any "jargon" that seems "new" and "technical" to them. Like the sentence: The survey will "go live" on Monday. Thank Providence that the cataloger drafted that for *me* to send, and I was able to edit it before the email went out. (And I had a ref librarian scare-quote "jargon" to me when she was explaining that she didn't know technical jargon likt the word "directory" in my explanation to her. I keep forgetting to use "folder" instead of "directory".)

The aforementioned cataloger wanted me to include my email address and phone number in the email so that anyone in the library who had questions or concerns about the survey could contact me. Bzuh? If they can't hit "reply" and get my email address that way, they're too stupid to talk to me, and anyway: when was the last time you had an emergency question about an already-approved survey that had to be answered RIGHT THEN? I removed my phone number from the email and surprisingly received exactly zero email queries about the survey.

Sorry for the rant. :P

Date: 2007-05-08 08:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com
I can't imagine people not wanting to know more about the tools they use every day that are indispensable to their jobs. And don't even get me started on the ones who get error messages and click through them without reading them. At my former job, I had a coworker who - deliberately I think because she as (a) crazy and (b) hated me and (c) CRAZY - refused to leave error messages up on the screen for me, no matter how many times I asked her to. Even when I was reading over her shoulder, trying to replicate the problem (and she would accuse me of trying to make her feel stupid when I asked for the steps she did as I was trying to replicate the problem. Did I mention the crazy?), she'd click the OK as fast as humanly possible on the error message.

She never grasped that I couldn't diagnose and fix a problem from "It's broken!"

And this is from my current job; I posted it back in November:
You phone to ask for help on an email you're composing to send to the faculty and staff email list across campus, fair enough. The reason the URL that you're telling them to go to doesn't work is that you made it up. I advise using the correct URL, it'll work better.
But I'd take this job over the previous one any day - at least people aren't crazy.

Date: 2007-05-11 05:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] theloomofmoira.livejournal.com
--- the way people can simultaneously be buying into "my computer hates me" and "I hate the IT people" is really odd. ---

of course I thought of this quote for you: "People hate to be reminded of ills they are unable or unwilling to remedy: such reminder, in forcing on them a sense of their own incapacity, or a more painful sense of an obligation to make some unpleasant effort, troubles their ease and shakes their self-complacency."

having to admit their weakness (their ignorance), having to admit they need help, makes many people upset with the very ones who would help them; after all, those helpers are the ones who make the ignorance most obvious. but that is no excuse for their behavior...

Date: 2007-05-11 11:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] theloomofmoira.livejournal.com
that would be Charlotte Bronte, from the book I just finished :)

Date: 2007-05-11 08:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rachelmanija.livejournal.com
"La brea" means "the tar" in Spanish. There is a very famous location in Los Angeles called "The La Brea Tar Pits," or, "The the tar tar pits."

Similar to a park in Santa Barbara which was endowed by a woman named Alice Keck Park, and so is officially the Alice Keck Park Park.

Date: 2007-05-11 11:36 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I also lvoe this icon. inconceivable!

one is reminded of The Los Angeles Angels...

Date: 2007-05-11 06:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] theloomofmoira.livejournal.com
I think the solution to this problem is to do away with acronyms, asap. ;)

I also hear myself saying things like "put in your PIN number at the ATM machine"... and then it's even worse because *I'm* the one doing it... and God knows I should have no possible excuse, or, er, just that I'm human.

really, though, it is a bad idea for Americans to use French acronyms/initialisms when we can't even manage our own!

so when did acronyms/initials become the thing?

Date: 2007-05-11 11:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] theloomofmoira.livejournal.com
I'm blaming the military. mostly just because.

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